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Ui(fopy Assured 



Sermons Preached by 
H. W. BOLTON, D. D. 



PRESS OF 

L. F. Bonaker & Son 

CAMDEN, N. J. 
I906 



LIBRARY of CONGRESS 
Two OoDies Received 

MAY 24 1906 

, ..Cooyrijht Entry , 
CLASS <X XXc. NO. 
~COPY B. 7 



,B55 V5 



Copyright, 1906, 
By I,. F. Bonaker & Son. 



THE REASON. 



These sermons were not called forth by a "de- 
sire to rush into print." They were delivered by 

the author at the Pentecostal services in connection 
with the seventieth session of the New Jersey An- 
nual Conference. So many kind words were spoken, 
so many were the testimonies as to help received, 
that after much prayer, the preacher has yielded to 
the requests of his brethren that they be given a 
more enduring form. In this spirit they are sent 
out as angels to minister to the needs of the dis- 
couraged, to strengthen the faint and perfect the 
character of every believing child of God. May 
they also incite a hunger of heart in them who know 
Him not. 

CHARLES L FITZGEORGE. 

Beverly, N. J. 



TESTIMONIALS 



For twenty years I have considered Dr. Bolton one of 
the truly great preachers of this country. I have heard 
them all on this side and many from the other side of the 
"great waters/' but I have traveled more miles on one 
journey to hear Dr. Bolton than I have for any other 
preacher in America. 

Every preacher and layman should have "Victory As- 
sured," the new volume of sermons by this able minister 
of Jesus Christ. What beautiful periods and strength of 
utterance and spiritual unction on every page ! May hea- 
ven bless the wider circulation of these sermons. 

Ever vours, 

Trenton, N. J. WILLIAM ALBERT FRYE, 

It gives me pleasure to commend these masterly ser- 
mons to all who desire to become more Christ-like in 
character. Dr. Bolton is a great preacher, and these 
sermons have accomplished untold good. I hope a hun- 
dred thousand copies will be sold and read. 
Camden, N. J. HENRY J. ZELLEY 

I learn that the sermons preached by Dr. H. W. 
Bolton at the last session of our annual Conference are to 
be published in a volume entitled "Victory Assured." I 
am delighted. I heard them with great pleasure and 
profit. Dr. Bolton is a most eloquent and forceful 
speaker. 

Pennsgrove, N. J. WILLIAM STONE. 

For two weeks Rev. H. W. Bolton, D. D., preached in 
our revival services. His sermons were logical and 
forceful. His appeals to the unconverted were convincing. 
A simple announcement that he is to occupy our pulpit 
would draw a large congregation. 

HOLMES F. GRAVATT, 
Camden, N. J. Pastor First M. E. Church. 

Dear Dr. Bolton : 

We have had great pleasure and profit listening to 
your sermons. I have no hesitancy in saying they were 
the best continuous series of sermons I have ever listened 
t0 - Very truly vours, 

DR. GEORGE B. WIGHT, 
Camden, N. J. Pastor Fifth Street M. E. Church. 



IDeMcatton 



To the Brethren of the New Jersey 
Conference with whom I have labored, 
these sermons are affectionately dedicated 
by their friend and co-laborer. 



CONTENTS 



PAGE 

Victory Assured 9 

Law of Christian Succession 29 

Garments of Strength and Beauty ... 45 

Bible Method of Cleansing 59 

Believing God 77 

Presenting the Christ 93 

Sonship in 

Satan's Admission and Mistake . . . . .125 
Disposing of Annoyances 141 



I 

VICTORY ASSURED. 

""Ask of me and I will give thee the nations for thine in- 
heritance, and the uttermost parts of the earth for 
thy possession."— R. V. Psalm ii, 8. 

A positive declaration of God's purpose con- 
cerning the reign of King Emmanuel. A decree of 
the outcome of the kingdoms of this world and the 
mission of Jesus as the Columbus of the soul in the 
interests of immortality. Its universality is like 
God, for 

"There's a wideness in God's mercy 

Like the wideness of the sea, 
There's a kindness in his justice 
Which is more than liberty. 

"If our love were but more simple 
We should take him at his word." 

It is a word from the Commander-in-Chief. 
Were it from a subordinate we might question the 
possibility of its fulfilment, but God speaks and all 
who know Him and His resources are silenced : 
for He is looking out over the fields from the 
observatory of an eternal now. To Him a thousand 
years are as a day and a day as a thousand years. 
When He promised His Son the nations for an 
inheritance, and the uttermost parts of the earth 
for His possession, the angelic reapers were coming 

9 



10 



Victory Assured. 



home with the trophies of the ages and the choirs 
were chanting the harvest home. Yea, the Saints 
were putting on their robes of light to shine forth 
in the kingdom of their Father. Ah, thank God; 
we have left the house of clay with its limitations ; 
we no longer take our reckoning from human out- 
looks, but from God's house, for he has come who 
takes the things of God and revealeth them unto 
(or into) us. 

To us it has been a long time since the artist 
stood in a crude studio, leaning up against an un- 
sightly block of marble, refusing to be interested 
in anything save the angel he saw within it, but 
which was invisible to all others. But it has been 
a much longer stretch of discipline since Jesus stood 
amid the hills of Galilee to transform the sinful and 
vulgar, blind and unbelieving, rebellious and palsied, 
into devout and loyal, believing and hopeful sons 
and daughters of the Lord Jehovah. But he threw 
his heart and life into the work, sidetracked death, 
opened the immortal door, was seen of angels, 
preached unto men, believed on in the earth, was 
received up into heaven and gave gifts unto men. 

Faith is our only evidence of the fulfilment of 
this great promise and decree. We see one billion 
five hundred millions of men, women and children 
in the darkness, ignorant of our Jesus and their 
Saviour, ignorant of the new life that has come to 
us through the life, death and resurrection of Jesus 
the Christ. We count our forces and they are less 



Victory Assured. 



ii 



than two hundred and fifty millions of Christians 
and two hundred and thirty millions of Roman 
Christians, and with these we are to meet that 
great dark world. And worse, many of our army 
are full of unbelief and more are indifferent. There 
are men and women who verily believe that all the 
hypocrisy and mischief of the ages is in the Church, 
and with Ahab they cry, "Hast thou found me, Oh, 
mine enemy?" In this I think they are honest, for 
we have to-night to think that of the Church mem- 
bership. We thoughtlessly criticise the ministry 
and laity before our children until they come to 
think them worse than the unconverted, and un- 
churched. A gentleman in Houlton, Maine, whom 
it was my privilege to minister unto, told me that 
his father wrung from him a promise not to have 
anything to do with Christians or the religion of 
Christ. Why? Because some man professing to be 
a Christian had wronged him in business. But 
these are the things which are seen ! Down deep 
in the heart of the most vile and desperately wicked 
wretch on earth is an unrest that is sighing for God. 
China and Japan, India and Africa, Mexico and 
South America, Bulgaria and the isles of the sea 
are saying, "Who will show us good?" Men and 
women are rushing along the banks of the rivers 
hoping to hear some John the Baptist say, "Behold 
the Lamb of God who taketh away the sins of the 
world." Men are not looking for some easy way 
of life as in other days. They are looking after 



12 



Victory Assured. 



something worthy of sacrifice. The heroism of 
old lives again. "Show us good" is the cry. The 
great reformers did not, do not, appeal to senti- 
mentalities, but to the heroism of the needy. Go 
gain the confidence of the vilest. He will tell you 
that he loathes the life he is living, although he 
still goes on. He is ashamed of himself, and his 
deeds, but continues in the business. The dial dees 
not always indicate the purpose of the spring. Back 
of this work you and I are doing is the eternal pur- 
pose of Him who knows the measure of human 
possibilities. Science and art have never surprised 
our Commander. To Him, man was His Father's 
masterpiece, and possible companion. He knew 
that His Father passed man the pen and compass 
when creation was finished. Because of this the 
wealth of the world is gathering around the cross 
and into a few hands, where God can lay hold on it 
in times of human emergencies. 

How can this promise be fulfilled? How can 
we overcome the enmity of men and subdue the 
earth? I do not know. That is not the only thing 
I do not know. If you had come to me when I 
was a boy hunting cows by night in the swamps of 
Maine, tola me that I should live long enough to 
see the electric light make night more brilliant than 
day. I should have asked with the feeling I now ask, 
"How can it be ?" I don't know how the billions 
of men, women and children, who have never heard 
of Jesus, are to be converted and baptized into His 



Victory Assured. 



13 



faith, and join the celebration of His birth. I do 
not know how God turns darkness into day without 
cog or wheel, sound or clash ; but He knows, and 
some beautiful morning I am going out with Him 
and see Him do it. It is a great privilege to stand 
now beneath the paling stars and watch the herald- 
ing of the dawn and the coming of the King of day; 
to feel the dampness of the atmosphere melt into 
delicious comfort, while birds break the silence of 
the morning. Please show me how it is done? 
Tell me, ye men of culture, how my Father accom- 
plishes so much in so short a time. Tell me how my 
brother took such hold on the science of growth, 
formulation of thought, and forces of the soul. I 
do not know. But one thing I do know. God has 
sent His Ambassador, and declared : "I shall give 
Jesus the nations of this w r orld and the uttermost 
parts of the earth" for His own, and that by the 
simple presentation of the Gospel. We are not 
out here at our own risk and expense. We are sent 
as Christ w r as sent. How often I have gone out 
into the wild desert to hear Israel mumur and com- 
plain ; to ask Moses how he expected to feed the 
caravan without a harvest ; to clothe the people 
without a factory and wonder at his self-composure, 
for he always seemed to me to be as unmoved as 
yonder sentinel of the north. "Oh, how dare 
you expose yourself to the freaks of that ignorant 
people?" "Ah, sir, I w 7 as sent out here. My com- 



14 



Victory Assured. 



mission bears the signature of the King. It was 
signed in the court of King Immanuel." 

Seek an interview with the Apostle Paul, as he 
comes up out of the sea ; wet, cold and hungry, 
friendless, bruised, ready to die. Ask him if he has 
not made a mistake ; if it w r ould not have been better 
for him, had he accepted honors at the hand of the 
Jewish nation, and he will say: "Sir, I was called 
to be an apostle ; I was separated unto the Gospel of 
God, sent to the Gentile world with a message of 
life. My mission is larger than my life. Hence, 
none of these things move me. Neither count I 
my life dear unto myself so that I may finish my 
course with joy and the ministry that I have re- 
ceived of the Lord Jesus/' With this key you may 
read the history wrought by the heralds of truth in 
a new light. When a man feels that he is sent of 
God he dares to do, give or be. It enabled Luther 
to face the whole Roman church and declare the 
truth of God. Wicliffe to give his body to be 
burned at the stake and martyrs in all lands to re- 
joice in the midst of the flames as messengers of 
Jehovah. Such confidence knows no limit, when 
intelligently exercised. Suppose a modern scoffer 
had met the angel en route from Jerusalem, with 
orders to release Peter from the penitentiary and 
had said, "Whither goest thou?" "To Jerusalem." 
"For what purpose ?" "To release God's servant now 
in prison, sir." "But the gates are closed and 
barred." "Yes ; but God sent me." "Well, there 



Victory Assured. 



15 



are sixteen soldiers on guard before the great iron 
gates and, beside, Peter is bound with chains be- 
tween two soldiers." "Yes, but you err, not know- 
ing the power of God. My commission bears the 
signature of the Eternal King, who is the author of 
all law. I go to release him upon the authority of 
the King of Kings." What avails the whimpering 
of scoffers when a man feels that God sent him. 

By the law of thought and conviction are we sent. 
By it we have the printing press, and engine, electric 
light and telephone, school and church, home and 
Bethel; by it all these things left the chamber of 
thought and dreamland for work. Archimedes, 
when he secured the secret of Nero's crown, went 
into the streets crying, "Eureka, Eureka!" When 
Galileo learned that the earth was in motion he went 
out to tell it, and his announcement shook the hoary 
institutions and thrones, and brought down upon 
his head the curse of the Church ; but still he her- 
alded the fact. By this law the Gospel of Jesus is 
spreading over the earth. Who can estimate the 
influence of sanctified manhood, womanhood or of 
home ? There are some things we can measure and 
test. You can test the power of an engine or meas- 
ure the brilliancy of an electric light ; but who shall 
measure the influence of a pure, cultured life sur- 
charged by the energy of the Holy Ghost? Saul of 
Tarsus tarried with Jesus in sight of Hermon until 
the thunders of Sinai were hushed, the tears of Cal- 
vary were dried and Hermon paled and life broke 



i6 



Victory Assured. 



over the cities of the dead. Life and immortality 
were brought to light and glory shone all around — 
Jewish theocracy melted, Grecian culture limped, 
and the Roman courts worshipped him in whom all 
the fullness of the Godhead dwelt bodily. Paul 
cannot be silenced. As soon bid the tides to stay 
or the sun to cease its shining as to tell such a mes- 
senger to be still. 

When the disciples saw Jesus, the Risen Christ, 
they went everywhere heralding the good news ; for 
to them it meant a larger life, purer manhood for 
all mankind. Sin and death opposed. Persecuted 
and imprisoned, still they went, saying, "Christ is 
risen from the dead, and hath power on earth to save 
men." For the Lord Jehovah was with them. Hell 
took out many injunctions, only to be overruled by 
the power of an indwelling Christ, for when He 
takes possession of a man, that man becomes as a 
voice crying in the wilderness of men, "Prepare 
ye the way of the Lord" — "Behold, the Lamb who 
taketh away the sins of the world !" You can never 
silence him. As soon attempt to padlock the open- 
ing lips of an earthquake. Oh, I am so glad that 
Saul stayed with Jesus until his eyes were opened 
and he felt the burning flow of the blood directed by 
him who leads into all truth. He could say with 
Peter in his fishing coat, with John in his mantle 
of love, with Matthew the publican: "The words 
we speak are not ours, but His who sent us." They 
won such victories as the world has never seen; 



Victory Assured. 



17 



they struck the shackles off the limbs and minds of 
the millions ; shook the thrones of the despots and 
marched into the centers of life with majestic step 
and kingly power. They went everywhere preach- 
ing a free, full and eternal salvation. The priests 
raged, Jewish ceremonies sank between the simple 
doctrine of Jesus, the Christ. The Gentile nations 
flocked to the standard of Immanuel, until proud 
Pagan mythology, stripped of its delusive grandeur, 
stood exposed, a gloomy sepulchre, full of dead 
memories. Philosophy was conquered and the mes- 
sage of heaven was told in the palaces of Rome. 
Men went, and are going everywhere, telling the 
simple story of Jesus and His Gospel. 

When the successors of those men who went to 
heaven from the grass-plots and hilltops of Europe, 
lighted by the torch of persecution, launched their 
ships for these shores, they were favored with fair 
w r inds, and Jesus calmed their storms and hastened 
their coming. They found the fields white for har- 
vest and began the work of publishing the truth, 
which, like fire among stubble, cleared the woods, 
ran along the banks of rivers, crossed the northern 
lakes, penetrated the southern swamps, defied the 
frosts of Canada, scaled the Allegheny heights and 
swept the coasts of this new world until men no 
longer wondered w 7 hy the Wesleys, Whitfield, As- 
bury, Boardman and Finley came to leave home and 
comfort, for sacrifice and toil in foreign lands. But 
it was only the manifestation of the Christ spirit, 



i8 



Victory Assured. 



''Go ye into all the world and preach the gospel to 
every creature." This is a plain, unmistakable and 
unrepealed command of our Lord and Saviour. It 
is in force to-day. It includes all the living members 
on earth and was given in the interest of all men 
everywhere. 

Philanthropists and utilitarians may wonder, as 
they view the fields over, why they are covered with 
happy hearts, joyous converts; why thousands and 
thousands of Africa's sons are worshipping our 
God ; why Indian tribes bow down in peace before 
Jesus as their Saviour ; why the dark continent is 
streaked with light from the uplifted Son of God. 
But we do not. Oh, no ! Livingston, Butler, Tho- 
burn, Taylor and Hartzell have heard and obeyed 
the command : Go preach the Gospel — not Mat- 
thew's, Mark's, Luke's or John's ; but the good news 
of Jesus the Christ. The journals of the celebrated 
Charles R. Darwin tell us that he made a tour of 
the world in 1832, and on a distant coast he found 
a people who were unapproachable barbarians. To 
him they were beyond redemption. They had 
reached an ebb where philanthropy, science and re- 
ligion could never send an advocate or have any 
power. But in the same year God was preparing a 
boy for that conflict, one Thomas Bridges, a waif, 
found between the bridges on Thomas street, in 
Bristol, England. Having no name, they christened 
him Thomas Bridges. When he had finished his 
schooling, he asked to be sent to that benighted, 



Victory Assured. 



19 



barbarous people. The church hesitated, but he 
entreated and finally prevailed. He translated the 
Bible into their language and began to tell that 
people of the Commander-in-Chief and the tribe was 
won. England, formerly afraid to land her ships at 
their shores, now opened up communications, and 
even Darwin became a patron of that work. 

Again, we are sent with a gospel that, given a 
fair chance, is more than a match for any people 
under the most adverse circumstances. It is the 
pure, simple gospel of Jesus this world needs. I 
read a sermon a few months ago in which the min- 
ister labored for an hour to prove that the writer 
had made a mistake in the interpretation of some 
non-essential word. I suppose the audience was 
greatly interested to know that the fathers had made 
a mistake, but I cannot see how they were edified, 
except it be that they had a minister sufficiently 
bright and learned to detect and show up the mis- 
takes of other men. But to my mind there never 
was an hour when the word needed an intelligent, 
enthusiastic presentation of the Gospel more than it 
does to-day. The fathers were successful and their 
success largely grew out of the fact they believed in 
the Gospel of the Son of God, and enthusiastically 
preached it, as the only hope for lost humanity. 

Br. Hall once said, "A house-going ministry will 
make a church-going people/' That depends upon 
the samples you take. The world demands a help- 
ful, cheer-creating and joy-possessing type of Chris- 



20 



Victory Assured. 



tianity, and he or she who goes from house to 
house with morose, sad, pessimistic utterances to 
fill the place with criticism about the ministry and 
government of the Church, faults of the church 
people and want of old-time loyalty will drive the 
people from the church into the camps established 
and supported by disaffected, back-slidden, discour- 
aged and disheartened men and women of Christian 
parentage. Men and women everywhere are sigh- 
ing for the touch of a compassionate Spirit, that 
will lift them within the reach of their immortal 
yearnings, and Christ alone can answer that de- 
mand. None can compete with Him in revealing the 
compassionate nature of God, and the way into His 
presence. He is the way, the only way ordained of 
God, and given power to sympathize with us by a 
body prepared for Him. He is, therefore, the life 
and the way into it. 

Mohamet with his 200,000,000 followers is 
without sympathy or compassion. He proclaims a 
cast-iron fate, before which stolid resignation is de- 
manded and the tired heart revolts. Buddha, with 
his 340,000,000 professors has no God. His system 
is based on Atheism, fragmentary and incomplete ; 
man can never be satisfied without knowledge of 
God and His compassion. Hindooism with its 330,- 
000,000 devotees has no personal God ; the Temples 
of Confucius are as cold as the grave and as silent 
as death. 'Tis true Confucious gives a morality, but 
not a life of love and compassion. 



Victory Assured. 21 

Have you ever read Mr. Shaw's story of the 
poor old man who was dying? "I went to him and 
I talked to him about Jesus and His love and power 
to save and His wonderful grace to keep. He was 
very respectful, surprisingly respectful under those 
conditions ; but I saw I wasn't gripping the man's 
heart, that I had not said the right word. Then the 
Holy Spirit whispered to me, 'Present Jesus to him 
as the pilot's Pilot.' Then I stepped a little nearer 
his bed, took his great muscular, clammy hand, al- 
ready beginning to get cold in death, and said, 'Now, 
my dear man, how many times when you have been 
piloting that steamer of yours, the only thing that 
has kept her off the rocks has been your clear eye 
and your steady nerve. Now you are in the strait of 
death, and the current is running against you, the 
fog is on and you need a pilot. Jesus is the pilot's 
Pilot. Won't you take Him on board?' He gath- 
ered up what proved afterward to be his dying 
strength, and answered with an f I will !' that could 
be heard all through the little apartment. Just as 
he was dying, I started the familiar Gospel hymn, 
in which the family joined— 

"Jesus, Saviour, pilot me, 
Over life's tempestuous sea; 
Unknown waves before me roll, 
Hiding rock and treacherous shoal; 
Chart and compass come from thee; 
Jesus. Saviour, pilot me." 

The old man died. When they brought him into 
the church two days afterward for his funeral, I 



22 



Victory Assured. 



stepped to the edge of the platform to commit his 
body to the ground. I saw a light on his face 
"which never was on sea or land/' and the old 
man out of the kindliness of his face seemed to be 
saying with a redeemed voice, "I met my Pilot face 
to face, and He brought me safely into port.'' That 
is the kind of preaching this old world needs just 
now, and with it God is going to save the people of 
the earth. Thanks be unto God we have the same 
gospel that burned in the bones of the Psalmist, 
reconstructed the kingdom of Israel in the days of 
Josiah, illuminated the temple, shone on Hermon, 
wept in the garden, preached on the cross, broke 
through and opened the tomb, nailed the thesis to 
the door in Wittemberg by the hand of Luther, 
shook Scotland in the prayers of John Knox, 
brought the Wesleys and the Moravian brothers 
across the sea, and is the power of God unto salva- 
tion to-day. God help us to get where He can use us. 

Some years ago a poor soldier, worn out in his 
country's service, took to the violin to earn his liv- 
ing. He was found playing in the streets of 
Vienna, but after awhile his hand became feeble 
and tremulous, and he could make no more music. 
One day while he sat there weeping, a man passed 
along and said: "My friend, you are too old and 
feeble; give me your violin/' He took the man's 
violin and began to discourse most exquisite music. 
The coin came in and in, until the hat was full. 
"Now," said the musician, "put that money in your 



Victory Assured. 



23 



pocket/'' He held his hat again and the violinist 
played more sweetly than ever, until some of the 
people wept and some shouted. Again the hat was 
filled. The violinist at last dropped the instrument 
and passed on, The whisper went, "Who is it? 
Who is it?" Some one just entering the crowd 
said : "Why, that is Bucher, the great violinist." 
Blacker had taken that old man's place and assumed 
his livelihood, and made sacrifice for him. So the 
Lord Jesus Christ came down to find us in spir- 
itual penury, and across the broken strings of His 
own great heart He strikes a strain of infinite music, 
which wins the attention of earth and heaven. He 
takes our poverty. He plays our music. He weeps 
our sorrow. He dies our death, as a sacrifice for 
us. It helps when all else fails. There can never 
be a successful substitute for this Gospel. 

There is a legend that tells of a harp left in an 
old baronial castle, It was a most wonderful in- 
strument, but, through years of disuse, had gath- 
ered rust, until the strings had lost their flexibility 
and would not respond to the touch of the most 
skillful artists. Many experts tried in vain to repair 
it. At last the man who made the instrument came 
that .way, and on entering the castle saw at once 
what was needed. He freed the strings and wires 
of their encumbrances, retuned and readjusted the 
instrument until the old-time sweetness was more 
than regained. He knew the nature of the instru- 
ment, and could see just what neglect had done for 



24 



Victory Assured. 



it. So he, who created, tempered and housed these 
spirits, so long bruised and dimmed, knows how to 
remove the sins, restore the image and return the 
life, and send men and women out as Jesus went 
to die for lost men. Thousands of our best edu- 
cated, best environed young men and women are 
offering themselves for the darkest corners of the 
earth, as heralds of the truth. Intelligent, wealthy 
men and women are leaving home, luxury, friends 
and comforts, for Jesus and His cause to serve ; 
but in this is not to be found the basis of largest 
hope. Nay, the unwritten and unwriteable Gospel 
is doing a work that cannot be measured, or re- 
ported in work, or tables of figures. There is power 
in the presence of a man who has left all to go as a 
native preacher. He may have more devotion than 
the missionary, but he cannot have the same power, 
for the people to whom he goes cannot understand 
how men leave home, friendships and civilizations 
to preach unto them. This is the missionaries' 
power. 

But far above all evidence, indication or sign 
God has said, "I will give you this world,' 7 and He 
has never failed nor identified himself with a fail- 
ing mission, and in this is my abiding confidence. 
Look to our great commander. He giveth us the 
victory. 

I have read a story of Luther, whose faith once 
astonished men and angels, and whose words shook 
the German hills, falling into depression. He be- 



Victory Assured. 



25 



came utterly discouraged ; things seemed to turn 
against him. Entering his home, he sat down to 
weep and lament his sad condition ; tears rolled 
down his cheeks, and he turned to Catharine, his 
wife, who, having wrapped her form in black robes 3 
was weeping most bitterly. As he saw her tears 
and black form he said : "Oh, Kate, what is the 
matter? Is your babe dead?'' "No, it is worse 
than that, husband." "Tell me the worst, tell me 
the worst," said Luther. "Why/ 3 said Catharine, 
"our Heavenly Father is dead, and therefore His 
cause in the earth is overturned ''' Martin Luther 
stood up and in a moment burst into a happy laugh. 
"I see," said the great man, "what a fool I have 
been. God is not dead, but I have acted as though 
He were." Would to God that all His saints might 
learn the lesson taught Luther, for, filled with the 
conception of the Infinite Father and the inexhaust- 
ible supplies at our disposal, we may fly with the 
angel of the morning over mountains and seas, 
across plains and through swamps, like the birds of 
paradise. We ought to fill this world with the sun- 
shine and joy of eternal hope, for our God is clothed 
with might. 

"The winds obey His voice; 

His voice sublime is heard afar; 
In distant peals it dies; 

He yokes the whirlwind to His car 
And sweeps the howling skies. 

Ye sons of earth in reverence bend; 
Ye nations wait His word 



26 



Victory Assured. 



And bid the choral song ascend 
To celebrate our God.' 1 

Our first duty is to accept by faith the fact that 
He who knows says, It shall be done. He has 
given orders to take possession of the heathen for 
His Son, and the uttermost parts of the earth for 
His possession. Let mortals accept it. Some years 
ago the question of the union of the States was 
debatable, but there was a man at the helm who 
decided that the Union must be preserved at all 
cost, and the minute that decision was adopted by 
the North, the Civil War was practically ended. 
At least the question was no longer debatable. 

So with the war of sin. When the followers of 
Jesus cease to question and believe God, not simply 
"in" God, but drop out the preposition and believe 
God, w r e shall be looking and planning for results. 
I once accompanied a man of God to a large audi- 
torium. I recall my feelings as he set about at 
once to arrange for the coming of sinners to the 
altar. I questioned the wisdom of such a move, but 
his brethren said : "They'll come." I felt that he 
was giving every unsaved person in the congrega- 
tion an opportunity to fortify himself against the 
the truth, but God honored the expectancy of his 
servant, and a score of strong men and women were 
gloriously saved at that service. 

Some months ago a ship was stranded off the 
coast of California. The life-saving crew 7 had done 
their utmost to rescue the men, and on returning 



Victory Assured. 



27 



the last time, exhausted and ready to fall, they 
were asked if they had gotten all. "All save one, 
was the reply." , Then a look of deep anxiety was 
passed round, when a young man sprang to the 
front, saying, "I will go if others will help." His 
mother embraced him and said, "My son, you are 
my all. Your father went down at sea, and your 
brother Will w 7 ent out more than a year ago and 
has not been heard from." "Yes, mother, but I 
should not be worthy of my sire did I not do my 
best to save that dying man." "Go, my son." The 
boat was launched, an hour of earnest struggle fol- 
lowed, and the wreck was reached once more ; the 
poor man was lowered into the boat. Then followed 
the hardest struggle amid the angry waves. The 
boat goes down, but rises over the swelling waves, 
until a voice is heard asking, "Did you save him?" 
"Yes, and tell mother 'tis brother Will." 

Thank God there are thousands of our best 
educated, best environed young men and women 
offering themselves for the darkest corners of the 
earth, as heralds of the truth. Intelligent, wealthy 
men and women are leaving home, luxury, friends 
and comforts to serve Jesus and His cause. In 
this may be found the basis of largest hope. Yea, 
the unwritten and unwriteable Gospel is doing a 
work that cannot be measured, or reported in work, 
or tables of figures ; with Paul of old, let men de- 
cide to know Jesus only and preach Him to all man- 
kind. 



Victory As 



II 



LAW OF CHRISTIAN SUCCESSION. 

"Instead of thy fathers snail be thy children, whom 
thou mayest make princes in aU the earth." — Psalm 45:16. 

This passage of Scripture has been greatly per- 
verted by the students of the Bible. Many have 
assumed that it had reference to the wedding of 
Solomon and the Queen of Egypt, and there is much 
in the language and figures used to suggest that 
thought. There is and always has been good and 
gracious gifts from the union of wealth and wis- 
dom. Solomon, King of Israel, did distribute many 
valuable gifts after his wedding to the Queen of 
Egypt, but there were no princes from that union. 
Rehoboam was the only prince in Solomon's family, 
and he was not of that union. 

Others have studied the prophecy in the light 
of Jesus' wedding; when on the heights of Mount 
Zion He shall take to Himself the church and lead 
her forth without spot or wrinkle over the plains 
of heaven, after the last angel gets home with the 
youngest member of the family. Then will Jesus 
take to himself His bride, clad in white robes, all 
pure within and adorned with the jewelry of the 
King. This poetic description has much to interest 
men, but the princes are to reign in this world — 

29 



3° 



Victory Assured. 



right here, before the bells of heaven begin the wed- 
ding march of Immanuel. But when Jesus took to 
Himself the nature of man, and when divinity and 
humanity was made perfect through suffering, 
princes were born to exercise power with God and 
among men in all the earth, and so long as that 
union is maintained princes will appear with power 
all divine and the heathen shall be given unto our 
King for an inheritance, and the uttermost part of 
the earth shall be possessed by Him. 

What, then, are the lessons of the text? First — 
the fathers must go. We must expect that when 
they have accomplished their work, be they coun- 
selors or warriors, prophets or priests. They are 
to be advanced. Persia had her Cyrus, Greece had 
her Alexander, Phidias, Socrates and Pericles ; 
Rome her Caesar, Cicero and Augustus ; France 
had her Napoleons and Philips ; England her Nel- 
son, Cromwell and Gladstone ; America her Wash- 
ington and Lincoln and Grant and McKinley — but 
they are all gone. To the casual reader this is 
wrong. It looks like a mistake. We repeat the old 
query : Why ? Why should a man grow old and dis- 
appear when he has acquired his princely powers 
and the world needs him so much? But the uni- 
versality of this law forbids criticism. The Great 
Executive must have some purpose in it, for the 
same law prevails in all kingdoms. The fields so 
rich in the expressions of life and forms of beauty, 
the brooks so full of music, the forests so rich in 



Law of Christian Succession. 



31 



foliage and the vineyards, orchards and gardens 
promise so much in harvest that we would keep 
them as they are alway ; but they are not here to 
stay. Soon the autumnal winds will blow and deso- 
lation follow. Go walk through the fields to-day, 
and field and forest, so full of life and music yester- 
day, are leafless and barren. The birds had re- 
turned, the flowers blossomed, the brooks were 
melodious, but, alas ! how quickly they went, and 
our hills are as barren, our forests as voiceless as 
the pole is bare, as though they had not been. In 
all this we see the wisdom of God. They went in 
view of increasing beauty and power, life and glory. 
Had they lingered earth's carpet would have worn 
out, become dusty and unsightly ; the flowers faded, 
the orchards fruitless. "As the days of the tree 
are the days of my people, saith the Lord." But 
in the going of men there is more than the fact of 
going, for they take with them largely the skill, ex- 
perience brought them. Their successors may be 
near, but must acquire skill as their predecessors 
did. When Elijah went home in his chariot of fire 
the people were conscious of having lost much that 
was not to be found in Elisha, hence the cry, 

"My father, my father, the chariot of Israel and the 
horsemen thereof, we see them no more. 

This is the feeling of all who are interested in 
the unfolding of God's plans. You remember how 
you felt when you first read of Moses' removal. In 
him Israel moved and had their being. Eighty 



3^ 



Victory Assured. 



years were spent in fitting him for a work you felt 
he was not permitted to perform. From our stand- 
point he was removed at a time when God's people 
needed him more than at any time in his whole life, 
but he went and another took his place. There was 
a moment in the history of this people when mil- 
lions cried, "Let me die in his stead." YVe could not 
see how this nation could go on without Mr. Lin- 
coln at that time. In both cases their successors 
were not the men we would have placed in authority. 
Joshua was a good man (said Israel), but he was 
without experience. And we tried to think John- 
son would do, but his life is written, and we live as 
a natton ; and God is fulfilling His prophecy, prov- 
ing to the world that the destiny of men and na- 
tions are with Him. 

Once in four years one-half of this great Repub- 
lic spends money, time and energy to prove that 
unless a change comes the nation will go to destruc- 
tion ; while the other half, with equal earnestness, 
assert that if there is a change we must perish. 
Changes occur, but we go on, with here and there a 
little ripple. Great men die ; others become dement- 
ed and childish, but the nation lives ; and may there 
not be another side to this picture or tapestry woven 
for some floor we have never yet seen? We allow 
ourselves to think that there is great danger in these 
sudden and radical changes ; their importance to us 
is very great because we are confined to local effects, 
to the loss of friendship, and that experience and 



Law of Christian Succession. 33 



counsel which is so important in the running of the 
interests known to us, forgetting all about the wider 
sweep and the more general good that is to come 
to the race. We question the removal of the fathers 
without the ability to transfer their skill and give 
to others the benefit of their experience, but God 
in running this world is not locking alone to the 
interests of the United States or to the results made 
manifest in time,, but to the broader interests of the 
nations of the earth and the endless harvest, when 
the kings of the earth shall bring their glory into 
everlasting habitations on high. We can see that 
this law brings good to those who go, for if our 
conception of the Christian's exit be correct, there 
is an enlargement of his horizon, a broader sweep 
given to his influence and a grander world of op- 
portunities in which to operate with enriched ex- 
periences and agencies. 

Here Paul ministered to a few hundred, but on 
taking his departure his utterances were gathered 
into epistles, and to-day he speaks to millions where 
once he spake to individuals, and his influence for 
good is increasing continually. Handel sat at an 
organ in a cathedral to finger the forte in the pres- 
ence of a few admirers. Xow his Easter anthem, 
"Hallelujah Chorus," "Israel in Egypt," "Samson 
in Blindness'' and others are ringing throughout 
the ages. The melody and harmony of his great 
soul is an inspiration to the millions who are seek- 
ing to reproduce the Christ life among men. God's 



34 



Victory Assured. 



purpose is that of good to the greatest number of 
persons in all lands and ages. Hence He has prob- 
lems awaiting us as we advance. The going up into 
the higher grades makes for our glory in assuming 
the responsibilities they bring. God knows what 
He is fitting us for and what lessons we need to 
learn. Did you ever know of a man, woman or na- 
tion developing any strength or influence without 
being made responsible for some interest or prin- 
ciple. We must learn to make, build, rule or reign 
by experience. Nay, in all this there is gain both 
to those who go and their successors. 

Secondly — We have a positive statement, "Shall 
be the children." Such a statement is of infinite 
value, both to the retiring and the witnessing. To 
the believing this brings rest. The future is not 
to be measured by visions and senses, for this pledge 
passes beyond appearances, signs and circumstances 
into the verities of Jehovah. 

Circumstances may throw the law from its wont- 
ed course, and cause it to produce unwonted work, 
or fail to accomplish any work, yet God holds the 
train of events and His promise is the mainspring, 
unbroken, unbiased and unmoved. 

You may have seen a tree clinging to a rock 
robed in ice. As you looked you felt how impos- 
sible that this tree should bear fruit. There is no 
earth on its roots, no foliage on its limbs, sap or 
appearance of life in its trunk. It is dead and bur- 
ied in ice. But you were hasty and possibly false. 



Law of Christian Succession. 35 

The promise does not depend upon appearances. 
Did the roots of that tree reach means of supply? 
Will the sun return this way? If, so the ice will 
melt, the late grown twigs will bud and blossom 
and even fruit may hang where icicles now sparkle in 
the frost. So in the study of this prophecy we can 
go back of the things which are seen, back of min- 
istry and organizations, to the demands and prom- 
ise of supply, remembering always that the things 
which are seen are temporal, while those things 
which are not seen are eternal. 

The hands may catch on the dial and fail to in- 
dicate the movement or report the time, but God 
is moving on and with accelerated movement He 
reaches out daily to set events and give time to all 
things, for His purpose is everlastingly sure and in 
His promises His people may rejoice in hope 
of endless triumph. Herein is our hope : When 
Abraham died his faith lived; when Elijah went up 
Elisha took his mantle and with it parted the Jor- 
dan ; if the ark falls into the hands of strangers 
God is sure to send for it and bring it back ; while 
His church is on the sea of changes Christ is at the 
helm, and heaven and home are at the masthead, 
for "instead of the fathers shall be the sons." 

We are apt to think the sons are not equal to 
the fathers. Where are the Otises, Adamses, Madi- 
sons, Jeffersons, Randolphs, Harrisons, Franklins 
and Washington^ of Colonial days? Where are the 
Chases, Grants, Shermans, Sheridans, Stantons, 



36 



Victory Assured. 



McPhersons, Thomases, Logans, Garfields, McKin- 
leys and Lincolns of the sixties? Where? If the 
demands were on us that were on the people in 
Colonial days or in the days of our civil w T ar there 
would be no lack. They confronted problems unlike 
those of to-day. Their problem was slavery. We 
call for men who can sweep a fleet from the seas 
without the loss of a man ; to take a well-fortified 
city without firing a gun. These are days that alarm 
little men, and some men whose counsel was sought 
in other days are passed by to-day. Ours is a world- 
wide conquest now. The question to-day is not : 
"Do we need Cuba and the islands of the sea?" but 
"do they need us?" — not do they want us, but do 
they need us. The North American Indian did 
not want our Pilgrim fathers, but most men be- 
lieve their coming was of God and for the good of 
the world and the opening of the gates for the ex- 
pansion of American civilization is as much the 
movement of the divine as any movement of the 
past. 

Our sons have come to the dawning of a new day 
in the history of the race, and none were ever more 
loyal and patriotic than the children of the twen- 
tieth century in America. The life that bounds in 
them comes to us out of a glorious past. It brings 
to the nation the wisdom of the wise, the wealth 
of the ages, with possibilities of immeasurable 
gain. Our resources are attracting the whole world, 
while men who loan money are hastening to our 



Law of Christian Succession. 37 

shores, in order to avail themselves of the wealth 
we offer. It is said, upon good authority, that our 
soil, this side of the Alaskas, would feed a billion 
of people, and if we turn our attention to the 
wealth beneath the soil the last ten years have pro- 
duced millions of dollars' worth of metal. Truly 
has Matthew Arnold said : "America holds the 
future." And to our children this law means more 
than to any kingdom or age. 

The waves of the sea roll, dash and break on 
the rockbound shore, breastwork or breakwater as 
of old as their predecessors did. The glorious gifts 
of summer that enrich our fields and orchards yield 
to the blasts of winter and leave the poles as bare 
and cheerless as before, but we may avail our- 
selves of the experience and achievements of the 
fathers, if, with the spirit of Sergeant Carney, we 
seize the flag and enter the conflict where the fathers 
leave it and rush on to victory. Every one I address 
this hour may step upon the shoulders of his pred- 
ecessor and look beyond the mountains and clouds 
that hinder his vision, or enter into battle on the 
eve of ultimate victory because of the warrior's 
experience. This was the faith which enabled 
Abram to see a nation rising out of the ashes of his 
only son. To march from Mount Moriah to Mt. 
Zion with songs of triumph and everlasting joy. It 
enabled Joshua to shout through the walls of Jeri- 
cho, and the boys in blue to climb the heights of Mt. 



38 



Victory Assured. 



Lookout and see victory in the sunset of apparent 
failure. 

For the sons some things have been forever 
settled. No anarchy can ever be rooted or wide- 
spread among the American people. Its hold is 
broken. Its day is past. It had a fair chance in the 
city of Chicago to appeal to the curiosity, sympathy 
and patronage of a million and a half people, and 
failed. When I came into possession of that fact 
my fears in reference to its hold were forever dis- 
missed. No ; we are a religious people and so per- 
fect is the liberation of the soul along these lines 
as to demand churches and schoolhouses every- 
where. When you stop to consider the sienilicance 
of this one fact — that by voluntary offerings we are 
building eleven churches a day ; that is, a church for 
every working hour and one to spare in this Re- 
public. The future has a brighter outlook than has 
been visible at any other period. Thirty years ago 
a celebrated blasphemer began his cry against the 
Bible and the church — twenty thousand churches 
have been built since then, and he was not able 
to overthrow the humblest altar on the farthest 
frontier. Again, the great questions in constitu- 
tional law have all been forever settled. 

The most important thought contained in the 
text is in the last clause : "Whom thou mayest make 
princes in all the earth. First, the children are here. 

"Ah, what would be the world to us 
If the children were no more? 



Law of Christian Succession. 39 

We should dread the desert behind us 
Worse than the dark before. 

What the leaves are to the forest, 

W ith light and air and food. 
Ere their sweet and tender juices 

Have been hardened into wood. 

That to the world are children. 
Through them it feels the glow, 

Of a brighter and sunnier climate 
Than reaches the trunks below. 

Come to me, O ye children, 

And whisper in my ear 
What the birds and the winds are singing 

In your sunny atmosphere. 

For what are all our contrivings. 

And the wisdom of our books. 
When compared with your caresses, 

And the gladness of your looks ? 

Ye are better than all the ballads 

That ever were sung or said. 
For ye are the living poems, 

And all the rest are dead. 

Yes, I know there are stains on my carpet, 
The traces of small, muddy boots; 

And I see your fair tapestry glowing, 
All spotless with blossoms and fruits. 

Yes, I know there are four little bedsides, 
Where I must stand watchful each night, 

While you go out in your carriage, 
And flash in your dresses so bright. 

. No, keep your fair home with its order, 

Its freedom from bother and noise 
And keep your own fanciful leisure, 
But give me my four splendid boys." 

It is God's plan and purpose to make us princes 
by inheritance, but some get so engrossed in busi- 



40 



Victory Assured. 



ness as not to develop the talent of their own chil- 
dren, and hence their business, honor and glory 
is transferred to other hands. I once came from a 
funeral service leaning on the arm of the city mar- 
shal. He remarked to ine : "That was a very sad 
case." I answered : "No ; for those seven men 
were all sons of this man." ''Yes.'' ''Are they not 
equal to the father in every sense?'' "Yes." "Was 
he not a true American and a Christian?" "Yes." 
"I wish every Christian American citizen could 
multiply himself by seven." He had lived well. The 
possibility of princes in all the earth is yours. Did 
it ever occur to you that another may take and 
wear the crown and honor for which your fathers 
fought, and to which you are rightfully entitled? 
But be assured if, like Hophni and Phineas, you are 
not prepared to do the work and receive the honor 
God will call some Samual to take your place 
Fathers, mothers, have you thought about leaving 
your offspring to manage your business and wear 
your honor? The responsibility for the future is 
great. If our sons are to succeed in the years be- 
fore us they must be robust and well-trained and 
equipped. Remember, a well-equipped mind in a 
frail body is like a great engine in a rickety old 
mill. You dare not start it for fear it will jar the 
building down. 

Again, the intellect must be trained rather than 
loaded. In Northfield there is an old house where 
five children were educated by a mother, left by the 



Law of Christian Succession. 



41 



death of her companion with seven children to care 
for and educate. At every meal Scripture was re- 
cited by every member of the family, daily prayers 
were offered in that home. Soon one of those boys 
was led away to sea ; voyage after voyage w r as made 
without returning home. The boy had become a 
man. Daily the mother prayed for her son. One 
day there appeared a stalwart frame before the door 
with bowed head, fearing lest his mother was dead. 
He turned and walked away to the churchyard to 
see if she was there, but returned to be greeted by 
the welcome voice: "Come in; come in!" "No ! no! 
not until my mother forgives me;'' was sobbed out. 
The lessons of home had not been lost. That wo- 
man's name was Mrs. Moody — D. L. Moody's 
mother, who lived to pray for her son in his great 
work. 

The cry is for entertainment, and the danger is 
in trying to make that which is instructive and help- 
ful so entertaining that brilliancy becomes the price 
of life. In 1812 a ship was set on fire and loosened 
from its moorings a few miles above the Niagara 
Falls. The night was dark and as that burning ship 
floated down the river, all on fire, it presented a 
very brilliant and entertaining scene for the mis- 
chievous boys, but to the men who had invested their 
all in preparing the ship for sea it was not so en- 
tertaining. So, to the young and thoughtless, there 
is entertainment and brilliancy associated with dis- 
sipation, often securing a following that is coveted ; 



42 



Victory Assured. 



but what is it to the father and mother whose lives 
have been poured out in preparing that son or 
daughter for usefulness? May not angels weep 
while others are amused over genius on fire with 
passion ? 

Life's problem is to overcome the world, the flesh 
and the devil. To do that we must become princes. 
God crowns with princely power all who surrender. 
The wrestling and agony of Jacob was in getting 
to the point of surrender. Peace came when Gen- 
eral Lee surrendered. So is it when a heart surren- 
ders to Christ. Jacob's first prayer was for help to 
do something himself. Had it been answered it 
would have led to slaughter. The wise engineer does 
not increase the power of an engine when it is off 
the track. You do not give the wayward boy more 
money with which to increase his misery. Death to 
sin is necessary in order for life to God. Jacob must 
suffer the crucifixion of self in order to become a 
prince, and so must you. Moses took on the halo 
of the crown when in Sinai he saw his weaknesses 
in becoming angry and breaking the tables on which 
God had written his law. Abram walked in the 
friendship of Jehovah when he was able to trust 
God without the visible presence and was ready to 
offer Isaac on God's altar. Even Jesus could not 
make known the glory of the resurrection and the 
glorification of the saints until personally He sur- 
rendered to death and walked forth in robes of vic- 
tory. Perfect rest and undisturbed confidence was 



Law of Christian Succession. 43 

reached by Jacob when all things visible had faded 
and the human strength gave way to weakness. The 
apostles found, the key of power when all forms 
were called in. When the hills were dusty and bar- 
ren hunger called forth those flashes of divinity 
that led the people to cry : "Behold the Messiah !" 
And to-day all development, growth of power and 
achievements in the religious world is along this line. 
Oh, for a cyclone from heaven, to break these self- 
constructed barriers that now shut us out from God, 
then we might go up into the Alpine heights of 
Christian joy to be forever with the Lord. 

Fathers, if you have done your best for those 
who are to succeed you, you may go confidently to 
your reward, for one of the two pictures will cer- 
tainly follow. 

There is an old legend of the White Hand. 
There was a king who glorified not in pomp or 
power, but in deeds of love. He scattered gifts 
for the poor. One day a bishop seized his hand and 
blessed it, saying : "May this fair hand, this boun- 
teous hand, never grow old." That king was slain 
in battle, and as the custom was, his limbs were 
taken off and exposed to public gaze, and long 
after all the rest had perished that hand remained 
unchanged, pointing upward toward heaven. Jesus 
may be to every home that hand, constantly minis- 
tering unselfish devotion, and will remain pure and 
white in the heaven of glory after earthly honors 
have faded and crown and jewels have perished. 



44 



Victory Assured. 



There is another picture in which mother appears 
asleep at the wheel, while angels come to fan her 
brow, cool the weary head and gather up the half- 
finished work to complete it. Old, yet true to the 
faithful ones. What we cannot do angels, who are 
our ministers, will finish. The angel who came when 
Peter, John and James slept, will come when weari- 
ness overcomes. 



Ill 



GARMENTS OF STRENGTH AND BEAUTY. 

"Awake, awake, put on thy strength, O Zion, and thy 
beautiful garments, O Jerusalem.' ' — Isaiah 52: 1. 

The one all-prevailing, all-consuming evil of the 
ages has been and is indifference. Indifference to 
evil and crime. Indifference to personal responsi- 
bility for its presence and reign. When the proph- 
et was awakened from his dreams and had a vision 
of the possibilities in the economy of God for Israel, 
he cried as one awakening from a deep sleep or es- 
caping from the snare of a subtle enemy : "Awake 
from thy weakness and unsightliness." 

If I am not mistaken, that is the great danger 
of this day in our own beloved land. It is not that 
our people have become reckless and profane. No ; 
our sons are better than we were. There were 
wicked men and women, evil plans and devices, in 
our days. Good men and women were vigilant 
and untiring in their works of love, but no more 
so than those of to-day. Nay; good people when 
aroused are more humane and self-sacrificing than 
they ever were in all the history of the race. But 
we have grown indifferent to the fact of sin and its 
havoc in our midst. More than one hundred thou- 
sand men have died in drunkenness during the year 

45 



4 6 



Victory Assured. 



1905. Over their graves is written, "No drunkard 
shall inherit the kingdom of heaven." They passed 
our doors, and more are on the way. We know 
it, stagger at the awful fact, but pass on without 
much effort to lessen the number. If there was a 
rock in any channel where half as many vessels were 
wrecked the Government would empty its treasury 
or double its navy to protect its shipping. The 
same is true of other interests. Every mail brings 
tidings of some railroad or coalpit disaster, and we 
have only time enough to spare to glance over the 
list of killed and injured to see if any of our im- 
mediate friends were among them. Then we buy 
a ticket over the same road and journey with the 
same officials in authority as when the disaster oc- 
curred. A score of statesmen, educators, command- 
ers and distinguished lecturers have died during 
1905. We have reason to believe their style of 
living shortened their days. And yet we strive hard 
to live as they lived or become as indifferent as 
though v/e had a lease on life forever and were to 
live in this world eternally. Such indifference robs 
the best of men and women of that sense of re- 
sponsibility so indispensable to safety. 

Familiarity with crime often robs men of all 
sense of personal responsibility for its increase. 
Only a few weeks ago a gentleman of respectability 
was asked to aid in closing a place of sin and death, 
but he replied, knowing that the placing of his signa- 
ture to the remonstrance would close it : "No ; I am 



Garments of Strength and Beauty. 47 

not in that business. I am not responsible for their 
business. I attend to my own affairs. Let them 
do the same." One week later, as he was on his 
way to the station to meet his family, the news- 
dealer's cry, "Wreck — many lives lost!" was heard. 
It startled him, but he said : "Well, there are many 
trains on this line. It is not mine." But it was, 
and in an hour the lifeless forms of wife and daugh- 
ter were before him, while surgeons were attending 
the badly injured younger daughter. The engineer 
of the freight train had visited that very saloon, left 
it in an intoxicated condition, only to run his train 
into the oncoming express. This man awoke, then, 
to the fact that it w T as his business to aid in remov- 
ing that institution of ruin. It will be a sad day 
when men lose sight of the fact that they are per- 
sonally responsible for the safety of others to the 
measure of their ability. I am not here to abuse 
the church. There never was an hour when God's 
people were more intelligent and spiritual in their 
relation to Christ. But it is impossible for us to 
feel as we once felt toward individuals who are off 
the track or out at sea in a merciless storm. I re- 
member the first time I ever saw an intoxicated man 
reeling and staggering in his effort to reach home. 
Oh, that sight ! I could not keep the thought of his 
wife and children from my mind. Now it is an 
hourly occurrence, and they pass by unnoticed. I 
know my heart is not less tender. I know I appreci- 
ate the conditions of sorrow, home and danger a 



48 



Victory Assured. 



thousand times more keenly than then, but were I 
to give the same attention to each case it would 
unfit me for anything else. The conditions are all 
changed. The church and saloon are in the same 
block ; vice and virtue look out of the same win- 
dow. We are hand-to-hand in our conflicts now 
and there is but one way out and that is by the de- 
velopment of a generation of men and women who 
can stand in the presence of sin and not yield to 
temptation ; men and women who can say, as Jesus 
said: "The prince of this world cometh and hath 
nothing in me." Personally, I think we have been 
thrashing the old dead leaves from off dead trees 
and beating about the dens of sin and death with 
carnal weapons long enough. I believe our only 
hope is in the law of life in Christ Jesus. What, 
then, is the strength of the church ? 

First — The incarnation of truth; God's Word 
is truth. His entrance giveth light. The light that 
lighteth every man who cometh into this world is 
the Word and the Word is God. When He comes 
in there is light, and sin takes on its heinousness^ 
as in the case of poor Hansen, reported by ex-At- 
torney General Griggs : Hansen was an unchristian- 
ized pagan — an Indian. He was thoroughly regen- 
erated by the entrance of truth. Then he saw things 
in a new light. Until that time he could chase the 
deer on Sunday as on other days. He could steal 
from his neighbor without any sense of condemna- 
tion ; murder, if need be, to get revenge or gain ; 



Garments of Strength axd Beauty. 49 

dance on the celebration of the birth of his Lord 
with the same grace as at the funeral of an enemy. 
But when truth entered his being how different! 
Until now his only fear was law. If he could es- 
cape the law it was all right for him to do as he 
pleased : but when converted he saw that he might 
desire to do things that would wrong others, and 
that a religious life was the only life worthy of 
man. "Jim" Hansen had hardly been converted 
when he sought out the captain of the Salvation 
Army and bravely confessed to him that he. with 
ten other Indians, had murdered two whites — a man 
and a woman — on the Lynn Canal, near Skagway, 
some months before. He asked for advice, and the 
captain told him that it was his duty to give himself 
up to the authorities. Without protest Hansen went 
to the United States Deputy Marshal and told the 
story of the crime. The Marshal got together a 
posse and,, guided by Hansen, went to the spot 
where the murder had been committed. There, un- 
der the snow, they found the bodies of Mr. and Mrs. 
Horton. The crime had been atrocious. Hansen, 
with his ten accomplices,, was indicted and held for 
trial. His confession and the testimony of the 
others concerned proved that Hansen himself had 
shot Horton, while Mrs. Horton was killed by an- 
other native. Six of the eleven Indians were con- 
victed. Hansen was sentenced to death : the others 
were committed to prison for long terms. The 
young Christian alone made no effort to escape con- 



Victory Assured. 



viction. The Judge before whom the case was tried 
was so impressed by Hansen's nobility that he wrote 
at length concerning the case to the Honorable 
John W. Griggs, Attorney General of the United 
States. Said the Judge: ''His (Hansen's) entire 
conduct during the trial of the other individuals 
convinced me of the honesty of his confession and 
the purity of the motives that induced it. That he 
was moved by high religious fervor there can be 
no doubt. At the last act of the drama, when I re- 
luctantly passed sentence of death upon him, in an- 
swer to the usual question why sentence should not 
be pronounced upon him, etc., he answered with 
undaunted heroism, a benignant smile on his face: 
'My brother, I have done my duty ; now you do 
yours.'' Such rare fortitude I have never witnessed/' 
Attorney General Griggs recommended to Presi- 
dent McKinley that Hansen's sentence be com- 
muted from death to imprisonment for life. 

When the Attorney General was questioned as 
to the correctness of the newspaper reports, he 
said: "The facts are genuinely correct." Xo one 
can read of "Jim" Hansen's moral heroism without 
receiving a spiritual uplift. Here was a man, de- 
graded, callous, worse than dead to truth and vir- 
tue, because he had never known what truth and 
virtue are. When at the plea of Christian workers 
he opened his heart to receive the inpourings of the 
Divine Spirit, a great flood of light came to him and 
he saw himself more clearly than does many a man 



Garments of Strength axd Beauty. 



5i 



of ten times his degree of civilization. What was 
given to him in that moment he could not have got 
from education, from art, from the economic usages 
of society. In a flash moral responsibility was born 
in him, and he had the courage to obey the voice 
of conscience. We honor "Jim" Hansen, Indian 
savage though he be. His crime has not been miti- 
gated by his confession ; it is even well, for the 
good of society, that he be punished ; but the man 
who stood before the Judge and said : "I have done 
my duty, now you do yours/" is not the man who 
murdered Mr. Horton. A new man has been born in 
the body of an old. 

That is the only law of safety for home, State 
or church. "The issues of life are out of the heart.''" 
Get the heart right and it will correct the head, 
but a foul basement will endanger the inmates in 
the best finished house. A heart that longs to do 
wickedly will soon find a way to escape the law. 
Shall we not be as earnest for the education of the 
heart as for that of the head? Let us insist upon re- 
generation early in life, so that they may see the 
hemousness of sin and the beauty of truth. Frank 
W. Warne, now Bishop of India, tells us this of 
himself to the honor of his sainted father. When 
he was about fourteen years of age he was given 
some special work one evening by his father. It 
happened that just then some boys came by to play, 
and instead of doing what he was told, Frank went 
off to play with them. A little later he met his 



52 



Victory Assured. 



father, who inquired, "Have you done what I told 
you ?" The boy answered, "Yes." The father knew 
that he had told an untruth, but said nothing. The 
boy felt rather badly about it, but nevertheless soon 
fell asleep, on going to bed, and slept soundly. 

Next forenoon his mother said to him, "Your 
father slept none all last night." Frank knew that 
his father was well, and said, "Why didn't he 
sleep?" His mother said, "He spent the whole night 
praying for you." 

The last sentence was like a bell ringing in Frank 
Warne's ears, and like an arrow in his heart. He 
was convicted of sin, and knew no rest until he knew 
it in the consciousness of pardoned sin. Bishop 
Warne has always attributed his decision to become 
a Christian to that night when his father, who was 
a godly man, kept vigil all night, praying for his 
boy who had proved untrue. Bishop Warne says 
to me, "I can never be sufficiently grateful to him 
for that night of prayer." Surely there is in that 
sentence from a distinguished and noble public man 
a good suggestion for many anxious Christian 
parents. 

The entrance of God's Word would change the 
whole world in its attitude toward sin. Do you 
know some real respectable men and women do not 
see much harm in lying. To them the harm is in 
being found out. "It is only one sin." True, but 
if you were in a room w T ith ten doors leading out- 



Garments of Strength and Beauty. 



53 



ward, how many would you have to pass through 
in order to be out of the room? 

By this we can clearly see that the strength 
of the church does not consist in numbers. Did it, 
we might despair, for the majority of adults in 
this world to-day are indifferent to the call and 
claims of our God. "I must be excused/' is the feel- 
ing on the part of many now in the ranks, while 
others are counting the years and battle before 
them, and longing for a release even though it be 
at the hand of death. It is not in material agencies, 
for it has become easy to estimate the force of guns 
and ships, powder and dynamite ; men can tell how 
thick to build the fort and ship in order to go un- 
harmed in the presence of guns. We can measure 
Niagara Falls and the Atlantic's waters, but who 
shall measure the power of Jehovah's truth? Our 
hope is not in oratory, sentiment or military strat- 
egy. These have been successfully resisted, but 
truth is eternal and unconquerable in him who is 
"willing more abundantly to show unto the heirs of 
promise the immutability of his counsel, confirmed 
it by an oath ; that by two immutable things, in which 
it was impossible for God to lie, we might have a 
strong consolation, who have fled for refuge to lay 
hold upon the hope set before us, which hope we 
have as an anchor of the soul, both sure and stead- 
fast, and which entereth into that within the vail," 
which hope was restored unto us by the resurrec- 
tion of our Lord and Saviour. He is our anchor. 



54 



Victory Assured. 



hope the cable that holds in the storm and never 
faileth. It is strengthened by use. It can never 
corrode or rust, for it is coiled in purity and works 
out of a pure heart, hence the one great work of 
God is to purify unto Himself a peculiar people. 

The foundations for the ancient temple were 
first cleansed of all rubbish accumulations and 
weaknesses so that the rocks might abide without 
cement or mortar. So is it with God's living tem- 
ple. He first cleanses that the rock of truth may 
remain as the rock of defense within the soul, and 
on that foundation He builds to abide. In olden 
times no one was allowed to enter the temple with- 
out washing. It was not an uncommon thing to 
see men who had journeyed for miles cleansing 
themselves and their robes before entering the 
courts of the Lord's house. Jesus fulfilled the same 
law. Of him it was declared : "And the Lord, whom 
ye seek, shall suddenly come to His temple, even the 
angel of the covenant, whom ye delight in, behold, 
he cometh, saith the Lord of hosts. But who may 
abide the day of his coming? and who shall stand 
when He appeareth ? for He is like a refiner's fire 
and like fuller's soap ; and He shall sit as a refiner 
and purifier of silver, and he shall purify the sons 
of Levi and purge them as gold and silver." It 
was for this the Psalmist prayed : "Behold thou de- 
sirest truth in the inward parts ; and in the hidden 
part thou shalt make me to know wisdom. Purge 
me with hyssop, and I shall be clean : wash me and 



Garments of Strength and Beauty 



I shall be whiter than snow." It is declared by our 
great Teacher, Jesus the Christ: "Every branch 
that beareth fruit. He purgeth it, that it may bring 
forth more fruit." John writes : "And every man 
that hath this hope in him purifieth himself, even as 
he is pure."' Why? Because therein is strength. A 
pure heart is strong in that it closes at the approach 
of sin as the rose closes at the coming of dust. It 
hides within the folds of Jehovah's truth at the ap- 
proach of evil and we are saved from its belittling 
and destructive force. Xone can hope to be strong 
until cleansed from all irregularities and superflui- 
ties. Our God has made no provision for continued 
babyhood. Sad, indeed, is that heart when first it 
dawns upon it that the baby boy would never grow 
in physique, mind or spirit. Ah, in the economy of 
grace all that we lost in Adam is made possible 
through salvation in Jesus. The pure in heart grow 
in knowledge and beauty. Oh, that men would 
come to see that sweet lovely babe, found of shep- 
herds, in a manger, wrapped in swaddling clothes, 
grew until he conquered death and robbed that an- 
cient Niagara of its tears, stepped on the stars as 
rounds in his ladder heavenward and is still grow- 
ing and will grow to our apprehension eternally. 
The purest breezes are in the mountain heights and 
Jesus came that we might have life more abund- 
antly. Out of a pure heart and a good conscience; 
that is, an intelligent conscience. Intelligence directs 
faith in its appropriations, hope in its flight, love 



56 



Victory Assured. 



in its ministry. Such men will never spend their 
time writing their names in the dust through which 
beasts, toads and worms crawl. They will not beat 
the air and cry for that which it never contained. It 
will bring a new set of pictures before the imagina- 
tion; a new hero, even the conqueror, Jesus the 
King, around whose head thought weaves garlands 
of beautv and glorv. 

But secondly : We read, "And thy beautiful 
garments. Strength and beauty, are not often found 
in the same thing or persons ; but here we are ex- 
horted to put on both. The mountain often lifts 
its craggy form in the pathway of an army, as a 
mighty bulwark. It may give birth to murmuring 
brooks, swelling rivers and be clothed with forests 
grand and majestic and yet have little or no beauty 
until the sun shines upon it. The lion in fierceness 
and power may roam through the forest a terror 
to man and beast, and yet with the rhinosceros and 
elephant have no beauty. The nightingale sings 
loudly and flies without weariness, but you would 
never think of calling it beautiful. So there are 
men who know nothing of that grace that beauti- 
fies and adorns the Christian. They have strength. 
Their criticism is often cruel, though correct. They 
remind you of the hickory limb — so crooked as not 
to be able to lie still or fit any place. But in God's 
house there are pillars of strength so beautiful that 
you know not which word to use in describing them. 
Boaz and Jachan brazen pillars which were set 



Garments of Strength and Beauty. 57 



up in the porch of the temple, were beautiful be- 
yond description, curiously wrought in chainwork, 
network, lilywork and pomegranates in rows all of 
brass, wrought according to the best rules of archi- 
tectural beauty, and yet in strength so great as to 
defy description. So ought the church to be great 
in resources, sympathies, gifts and graces, as never 
to harm but always to help. Like the olive that 
lifted its head above the floods, that stood amid the 
storm and ruin of the w 7 asting world, to offer the 
flying dove its evergreen leaf in evidence of a hold 
it had beyond the depths of the floods, so ought the 
Christian lift his head above the floods of supersti- 
tion, the smoke and dust of infidelity, with fadeless 
beauty, for he has a hold on God untouched by the 
tides of sin. Clad in robes of beauty and strength 
he may stand unmoved. He has an enlarged vision, 
a refined nature that defies all opposing forces. 

Again, the Christian's strength and beauty is 
from within. He is to open the heart for the com- 
ing of Christ, as the flower opens to the coming 
of the sun. At his coming there is joy, peace and 
good-will to all men. Then the spirit bathes in the 
life-giving floods of Calvary and sings a new song 
of life forever. Here is the source of all power and 
beauty. When prayers get dull and are pushed out 
by noise and bluster, testimonies are lengthy and 
cold, gifts small and hard to secure (secured only 
bv the pump system) , you may be sure there is some- 
thing wrong. When God selected the model He per- 



58 



Victory Assured. 



fected him in the crucible and then ordained that 
we should be conformed to his likeness. Did you ever 
watch the growth of a Lebanon cedar in a glass 
house ? At first the growth was rapid, but soon the 
dimensions of the house were filled and it turned 
backward to the earth, filled the place as a weak, 
scrubby, crooked, unsightly shrub. It always re- 
minds me of hot-house Christians who think they 
know it all at the beginning of life, but when the 
strong pillars that hold them are moved, they say 
the same prayers, cry over the same stories, sing^ 
the same songs, give the same amount, vote the 
same ticket and growl over the same troubles. 

In Paris may be found a mosaic of surpassing 
beauty. It is made of little pieces of glass, rock, 
marble and minerals, unsightly and worthless in 
themselves, but passing through the hand of the 
artist each is made to strengthen and beautify the 
whole picture. So our God is gathering Jap, China- 
man, African, Norwegian and American and cleans- 
ing, burnishing and beautifying them until in his 
home a living mosaic shall appear as the wonder of 
angels and the delight of God. I want to be there- 
Yes ; I mean to be — don't you ? 



IV 



BIBLE METHOD OF CLEANSING. 

''Wherewithal shall a young man cleanse his way? By 
taking heed thereto according to thy word.'' — Psalm 119: 9. 

These words suggest many lines of thought. 
Were I an artist I might spend the hour in present- 
ing a young man on the threshold of endless life 
with unconditioned immortality, in the midst of 
infinite resources, possessed of a spirit such as the 
inspiration of the Almighty giveth understanding. 
But there is a philosophy that art never can pre- 
sent or answer. Why should a young man desire 
to change his ways, leave his associations and en- 
vironment? Why should he desire to be clean? 
It is easy and natural to be ignorant. Any boy can 
stand at the base of the mountain and throw stones 
into the brook, but he who would stand on the 
shoulders of the mountain, wash his blood in the 
oxygen of the higher currents and look out into 
God's spacious heavens must climb. The weakest 
of men can drift down the river with the tide or 
current, but it takes a manly man to make harbor 
at the head of navigation against tide and current. 
Any man can be an agnostic, boasting of his ignor- 
ance or infidelity ; but he must overcome if he would 
see God. 

59 



6o 



Victory Assured. 



Why, then, this cry from the spirit of man? 
Because he is a man, and there is a spirit within 
him and the inspiration of the Almighty giveth him 
understanding such as begets aspirations. It is that 
which gives man his superiority over all things and 
created beings. To man was given the right of con- 
trol when creation was completed, and he and he 
only was told to say "Our Father." Thank God, 
that is the possible right of all men, a part of the 
furnishing of every soul, the only condition of adop- 
tion into God's family. It may be found in every 
soul. Sometimes it is like the broken shaft or shat- 
tered vessel in the debris of an ancient city, merely 
indicating what the design was, what the architect 
had in mind. But it is there. Summon the most vile 
man in all your community and ask him what man 
ought to be, and why he is not what he knows he 
should be, and he will lift the standard higher than 
the most erratic, enthusiastic perfectionist. His stand- 
ard admits of no possible weakness or waywardness. 
Somehow, by some law that thought has been burn- 
ing for utterance, and he really longs for the minute 
to be all that his ideal calls for. Because of this 
men often, and suddenly, change from sin to holi- 
ness, from shame to honor, drunkenness to sobriety, 
from idleness to industry. Did you ever try to ac- 
count for the marvelous change and complete 
reformation that took place in Jean Valjean. When 
he saw the possible manhood and greatness set forth 
in the spirit of the good bishop, he saw a man large 



Bible Method of Cleansing. 6i 



-enough to forgive and said: "I can and I will be 
a man." That saved him and has saved millions. 
Saul of Tarsus met his ideal man and sprang up 
into his life and found it within himself. 

Again. The Word, who was God, was made 
flesh, took upon Himself our form, and the world 
saw in Him man's possibilities. When the old king 
saw the heavens mirrored in the placid waters of 
the lake he cried : "The heavens declare the glory 
of God and the firmament showeth His handiwork." 
That is, the arrangement and movements, the beauty 
and power of the heavens tell us of God. They are 
creatures of Deity, not made by hands. So when 
we see and know man as he carne forth from the 
hand of Him who made the heavens and the earth 
and all that therein is, we shall long to be like Him. 
One look at man in the light of his possibilities will 
awaken a desire to break through our narrow, be- 
nighted environments and reach the heights of our 
vision. When a man catches a glimpse of what he 
may be he cannot rest until he is what the aspira- 
tions of his spirit long for, for there are heights to 
scale and depths to sound, pictures to be painted and 
environments to be created, fruit to be gathered 
and joys to be enlarged. Have you ever measured 
man by God's outlay for him? Have you ever 
studied the law in its majesty and followed its lead- 
ing until the day star of hope arose within your own 
heart and the darkness dispelled, sin was burned out 
and the chill of selfishness melted as snow over the 



62 



Victory Assured. 



forget-me-nots of love? Surely, God must have seen 
in man more than has yet apppeared or he never 
would have sacrificed so much for him. That which 
now appears is not in keeping with God's outlay. 
The law is in itself a most wonderful document, only 
surpassed by the sacrificial offering of Jesus. A 
certain Western lawyer claiming to be an infidel, 
while conversing with a quaint and eccentric aged 
clergyman, asked : "What has the Bible ever done 
for any community ?" The answer was: "'Take the 
law as given Moses, study it in its application to 
the development of character, the purity of home 
and the strength of society." In a few months they 
met again. This time the lawyer said : "Where did 
Moses get the principles set forth in the Decalogue ? 
I cannot see wherein the experience of the ages 
can enable the wisest of the wise to add or take 
from it one word that would make it more potent, 
or more perfectly meet the conditions of men, home 
and society." But that man did not see the majesty 
and glory of the law. 

There are manv who think of the law as given 
in the interest of good government, but fail to recog- 
nize the Governor. They live and die without see- 
ing, as Plato and Demosthenes saw, the impossi- 
bility of man's enacting law to a purpose, there- 
fore the Infinite must apply to it. We decorate the 
graves of hundreds of thousands of our heroic 
dead who died to save the best form of govern- 
ment on earth without realizing that its weakness 



Bible Method of Ci^ansing. 



63 



was in the administration and not in the govern- 
ment or Constitution. It was the weakness and 
sinfulness of men that made it necessary for eight 
hundred thousand men to be sacrificed in order 
that the nation might come to its supremacy. The 
weakness was not in the law, but in man and an- 
gels, who failed to apprehend its nature and pur- 
pose. It was never designed to save men, but to 
restrain and show them that the way of the trans- 
gressor is hard, and as a schoolmaster to bring 
men to Christ. Nay, nay ; we shall never know 
the majesty of the law until we see Jesus, who has 
filled it full and is the end thereof. God has "pro- 
vided some better thing for us, that they without us 
should not be made perfect.'' How often these feet 
have stepped upon the emerald and the onyx; these 
eyes looked over the city, and these ears heard the 
music ; oh, my lips have quivered for one touch of 
the water of life as it flowed from beneath the 
throne, but there is no hope until the living Christ 
forgives and cleanses me. It was this view that 
led the Psalmist to ask: "Wherewithal shall (can) 
a young man cleanse his way?' 5 He saw the weak- 
ness of men, the uncertainty of princes and the 
instability of friendships, and cried from the deep 
of his soul for help, that he might reach the ideal 
manhood found in himself. Christ is the supremacy 
of the law in that he not only throws light upon the 
wreck, but supplies the power whereby man may be- 



6 4 



Victory Assured. 



come the Son of God. I wonder no longer that 
the saints sang 

"Hail sovereign grace that first began 
The scheme to rescue fallen man. 

This has always been my joy. I need to see a 
man who lives as I have to live, and moves among 
men as 1 am expected to move. Such a man touches 
me with great helpfulness. This to me solves one 
of Paul's mysteries ; why God "was manifested in 
the flesh/' Some seem to be troubled over the 
miraculous conception and incarnation of our Christ, 
but it is my only way into God. I must see God, and 
that in the life of a man, by incarnation, or never 
hope to see Him in glory. 

How can I be made meet for the society of 
God? By taking heed, giving attention to God's 
Word. Can science, ancient or modern, experience 
long and varied, add anything here? Take heed, 
know and apply God's law. This is not in keeping 
with the spirit of the world to-day. Time, money 
and thought are largely directed with a view of en- 
tertainment. Art and science, music and literature 
are all on duty to entertain or make us entertaining. 
Everybody seems bent upon finding the latest phase 
of thought, shade of doubt ^nd statement of con- 
viction that will not trouble them. Let a stranger 
appear in any community, and the question is not: 
"Who or what is he ?" O, no ! "Where has he been?" 
"What can he tell us to interest us?" "What have 
you read of late ? How did you like it ?" "Isn't his 



Bible. Method of Cleansing. 65 



style just charming?" Never a word as to what 
you think of his conclusions ; what impressions did 
the reading leave, were you convinced or brought 
under conviction. I am often reminded of a boy 
who was whipping his younger brother and a pas- 
ser-by seized him by the collar and said : "What were 
you thinking about ?" Said he : "I was not thinking 
at all; I was just doing it." This is not strange, 
for we live in a hurrying rushing, feverish haste, 
such as allows but little time for thought, no time 
for meditation. Tell me, please, how men and wo- 
men can expect to escape the evils so well thought 
out, systematized and entertainingly presented with- 
out meeting those whose only business is to capture 
and lead to ruin? 

"Take heed." First, of thyself. There are in- 
finite possibilities within one's self to which most 
men are indifferent and which no man knoweth. 
There are islands, continents, rivers and seas with- 
in human consciousness from whence come influ- 
ences, inspirations and suggestions, which if re- 
ceived, analyzed and utilized would lead to great 
victories and achievements. On the other hand, 
there are weaknesses that need guarding and fortify- 
ing in order that we may come to that perfection 
God designed we should possess and for which he 
has provided. But, if ignorant, why be alarmed? 
Just there is the danger. A gentleman traveling 
in the old world, crept into a deserted castle to 
spend a night in the midst of ruins. During his 



66 



Victory Assured. 



slumber he was awakened by a heavy pressure on 
his chest. He did not know what it was nor from 
whence it came. The moon, on her nightly mis- 
sion, filtered a ray of light through a crevice in 
the wall. To his horror, he saw the gleaming eyes 
of a monster serpent. After a desperate struggle 
he managed to escape unhurt. When was he in 
greatest danger — before or after he was awakened? 
Certainly when asleep. So is every man w T ho is 
asleep in sin. For weaknesses, cherished sins bur- 
ied in the slumbering soul will sooner or later wreck 
and ruin the man or woman who thoughtlessly 
drifts on over the sea of life. Many a hopeful 
mind has been ruined, many a conscience silenced 
and reason dethroned by the accumulation of evils 
they knew little or nothing about. 

There are weak places in every heart that need 
to be strengthened by the hiding of God's Word. 
His Word is a living fortification over which no 
enemy can ever pass. To know one's danger is of 
infinite importance; hence the incarnation of Christ 
as the "Light of the World." When Holland's bot- 
tom lands were covered with forty-four villages, 
and all seemed happy and prosperous, the arm of 
the sea uplifted itself and swept all out into the 
deep ; but Holland did not see or realize her dan- 
ger or the weakness of her position. She slept on, 
thinking it a freak of nature, such as would never 
occur again. In twelve years it was repeated, with 
the loss of eighty thousand men, women and chil- 



Bible: Method of Cleansing. 67 



dren. Then Holland awoke to build dykes forty feet 
above high-water mark. Since then millions have 
been spent annually to protect her people. Many 
look on the havoc sin is making as though it would 
never reach them, while the same conditions of 
ruin are with them. Awake ! I beseech you, awake, 
and hide God's Word within your hearts, that sin 
come not into your life with its destructive power. 
Awake, before you have cause to lament the awful 
loss of life occasioned by your indifference. God's 
Word is the only safe fortification wherein we can 
hope to rest securely from the sweep of the sea 
of sin. 

For this reason we are exhorted to think ac- 
cording to God's Word — that we may realize the 
greatness of our needs. Then we should appreci- 
ate more fully the perfection of God's system of 
help. When the wise Franklin had advanced in 
years and had outgrown the measles of doubt, he 
met a young admirer who had been overcome and 
swamped in doubts. He said : "Young man, my 
advice to you is, that you read and cultivate an ac- 
quaintance w r ith and firm belief in the Holy Book." 
In this he was not alone. Thomas Jefferson once 
said ; "I have always said and always w 7 ill say, that 
the studious perusal of the sacred volume will make 
better citizeas, better fathers and better husbands 
and better homes." Sir Isaac Newton said : "We 
accept the Scriptures as the Word of God and to be 
the most sublime philosophy. I find more in them 



68 



Victory Assured. 



that is genuine, authentic and reliable as history r 
than in any other work written." And S. T. Cole- 
ridge : "I know the Bible is an inspired book, be- 
cause it finds me at greater depth of my being than 
any other book." Take heed, then, according to 
God's law. Study it as the mariner studies his 
chart, use it as the helmsman and pilot uses the 
compass, for we are out on the ocean, all inex- 
perienced sailors. We have never sailed this way 
before, we shall never sail it again. There are shoals 
and trade winds — God knows all about them. If 
we fail in this, it is a hopeless and utter failure. 
In view of the importance of the voyage, the worth 
of the immortal soul, and the possibility of ship- 
wreck, take heed according to God's established law 
and follow the course indicated by Him in revela- 
tion. 

Why think according to God's law ? For two rea- 
sons. First, He knows what awaits us in the un- 
folding future. The child objects, very naturally, 
to study, discipline and toil, for he has no sense of 
what will be expected and required of him when 
he enters the arena of life. The parent has, and 
therefore insists on the child being educated and 
trained for coming events. We can have no con- 
ception of future requirements, such as will greet 
us in the unhoused, untried future. That which we, 
"because of our present environments think of least 
importance," may be of greatest importance to Him 
who knows all things ; therefore, His law, His com- 



Bible Method of Cleansing. 69 



mandments, His prohibitions, should be cherished 
and observed most carefully. 

Again, His Word has been tried, tested, as 
the chemists test the ore. Every promise and 
prophecy, fixing results and events (up to date) has 
been tested. Not those of the Old Testament 
alone, but those of the older old, new and newer 
Testaments have all been tested, so that students 
may know of their value. The most severe ordeals 
have been applied. When we look on the bound 
volume of God's Word and recall its age, a history 
reaching back into the dawn of creation's morn, 
where the footprints of men have been w r ashed out, 
and the works of their hands have long since 
smouldered in the dust, then remember that this 
book has stood the test of time. We wonder how 
anyone can speak flippantly or slightingly of its 
contents. We are exhorted to read Heroditus and 
Homer because of their reference to the buried past, 
but they knew nothing of the facts cited by Job 
in his thirty-eighth chapter. He deals with ele- 
ments, principles and works that were known to 
God before the foundations of the earth were laid. 
He located the springs that now make possible the 
artesian wells, furnishing water for the thirsting 
millions. He located Orion and the Pleiades, whose 
forces are associated with the march of worlds. He 
spoke of men who outlived their generation by giv- 
ing the w r orld facts established five hundred years be- 
fore Heroditus was born. He made it possible for 



7 o 



Victory Assured. 



students to walk back over bridges into civilizations 
where kings reigned, artisans wrought, who are un- 
heard of elsewhere. With the aid of Moses and Job 
we listen to the bells of the morning. 

Students of this book not only know of the past, 
but they see a new earth and a new heaven risings 
out of the sea of the future. They linger not in 
questioning where Heroditus and Homer fell. They 
are not bewildered by the Asiatic philosopher's ut- 
terances, for they are in possession of a law and 
a system of ethics in circulation a thousand years 
before Buddha was born and nine hundred and 
sixty years before his illumination beneath the wis- 
dom tree. Time renders it more and more valuable 
as the centuries come and go. While time conquers 
all other works it gives ring and force to the living 
oracles of God. On an old mosque in Damascus,, 
once a Christian church, but for the last twelve cen- 
turies ranked among the holiest of Mohammedan 
sanctuaries, are written these words : "Thy king- 
dom, oh Christ, is an everlasting kingdom and Thy 
dominion endureth throughout all generations." In 
that old synagogue the name of Christ was blas- 
phemed from week to week for twelve hundred 
years, but the inscription remained undisturbed, 
a divine record abiding amid the w r reck of time. 
Many sophomoric men and women appear to be 
much alarmed at the criticism of the critics, but 
there is no danger. God has locked His thoughts 
in vehicles beyond the touch of man. No mortal 



Bible Method of Cleansing. 71 



can reach them but by the Holy Ghost, who came 
to lead into all truth. This ordeal strikes old earth 
dumb every thirty-five years, while all the works 
of men suffer and disappear at its passing the 
Book remains. Halls, temples and cities, once mas- 
sive and well-sustained, now sleep in the debris. 
Nothing of human genius or power can stand this 
test. Books suffer most. Those that once moved 
the world are now obsolete and almost forgotten. 
I remember sitting up all night to hear my father 
read "Uncle Tom's Cabin,'' 5 but you seldom hear the 
book spoken of to-day. There is no longer a de- 
mand for such a work. Indeed, there are very few 
books that outlive the record of one century. Lan- 
guage, as a vehicle of thought, is constantly chang- 
ing. Words once full of force and beauty are now 
meaningless and have pased out of use, but amid 
all this the Bible remains unchanged and unharmed, 
for it is the vehicle of Jehovah's thought. My friend 
may challenge this statement by calling attention 
to the new version and the adaption of the Scrip- 
tures to the conditions of men. The growth in 
thought and liberty seem to demand changes. Criti- 
cism may be honestly offered, but the changes are 
not. in the "Word of God, but in the vehicles or 
translations of the Word in which God's truth is 
stored. We must distinguish between the Bible and 
its translations. We have a great many transla- 
tions of the old Book, but there is no change in the 
Word of God. Words written by Jehovah on the 



7 2 



Victory Assured. 



tables of stone after fifteen hundred years of oral 
direction took their place in the heaven of truth, 
never to be changed. God took this matter into 
His own hand and killed the languages in which 
the book was given, so that the Hebrew and Greek 
should no longer be subject to the changes that 
come to living languages, and all the translators of 
the ages are compelled to go back to the original 
forms in which God deposited His will and make 
every translation from the ever-abiding and eter- 
nally fixed Word of God. This is the latest book 
in the library. Its description of places and events 
are as modern and exact in the use of terms and 
figures as those of Phelps, Newman, Ridgeway, 
Volney, Gibbon or Curtis. Orators and authors 
still find their best figures in scriptural language. 
We have in one book a history older than the morn- 
ing, reaching back to the throne of an eternal will, 
and later than the latest discoveries of science, 
reaching on to the reception of saints and giving a 
description of the scenes after the stars have all 
gone out. 

Times tests this Book as few others could be 
tested, because of its prophetic nature. The Old 
Testament Scriptures are threaded through and 
through with prophetic utterances. Jeremiah told 
the people of his day that Babylon should fall and 
when they queried how such a citadel could be 
taken, knowing that the walls were too thick and 
high to be battered down by any weapon known to 



Bible Method of Cleansing. 73 



that age. he said : "The Euphrates will dry up and 
the city shall be filled with soldiers as thick as cater- 
pillars, the walls shall be deserted and the king 
shall die." Had he lived at the time when Cyrus 
turned the waters of the Euphrates aside and en- 
tered with his army into the halls, on the night of 
Belshazzars feast, the prophecy could not have been 
more accurate. If you read Isaiah as found in the 
fourteenth chapter and the fourth verse, where he 
states that the people shall take up this proverb 
against the king of Babylon and say, "How hath 
the oppressor ceased, the Golden City ceased,''' you 
will be forced to admit that omniscence gave birth 
to that declaration, for the language of prophecy 
and history are the same and we are compelled 
to acknowledge the presence of omniscience in re- 
cording the events of Scripture long before they 
were enacted. David in speaking of Christ's birth 
gives dates, names and places. Isaiah gives a de- 
scription of time, place, people and the escort and 
fireworks attending his advent. David fifteen hun- 
dred years before Christ's birth and Peter thirty- 
three years after recorded the fact of His resurrec- 
tion in the same language. 

Again, these standards have been tested by ex- 
periences of men. A man may be ignorant of the 
law that condemns, and yet fall under condemnation. 
We may try in a thousand different ways to justify 
Peter in denying his Lord, and we may make out 
a very plausible case, as many modern preachers 



74 



Victory Assured. 



have done, but we find him weeping bitterly under 
a deep sense of condemnation for having done 
wrong. His experience melts all the sophistries of 
men, and this law is without change amid the 
ever-changing conditions of men. You and I have 
been excused by our friends when we found no 
ground for excuse at the bar of our own judgment. 

Two young men went to hear a noted blas- 
phemer one evening. One of the men was a Chris- 
tian, the other a moralist. The lecturer with his 
sarcasm and scorn swept the whole field of Chris- 
tian ethics. On their way home one was heard to 
say: "Well, Jim, I have thought of these things be- 
fore, and certainly he makes a very plausible case. 
I am frank to say I cannot meet his charges or re- 
fute his statements. How do you feel? Come, you 
claim to be a Christian, tell me." "Well, I have 
thought of these things and there are many of them 
I can't explain or refute, but that don't disturb me 
in the least, for there are a few things I know, and 
they are worth more than all the things the lecturer 
don't know.''' These young men represent a very 
large class. There are thousands who go through 
life with a large bundle of negatives, crying and 
screaming "Who knows! Who knows!" ''Who can 
understand?" Because they find no solution to the 
hidden things, they deny the things which are re- 
vealed. There are others, who having tested a few 
things by experience, are in possession of definite 
knowledge. These await confidently the enlarge- 



Bible; Method of Cleansing. 



75 



ment of their horizon and the development of their 
intellect by the enrichment of an experience for 
revelations concerning such things as are hidden — 
all the argument in the world cannot disturb their 
faith in the truth thus demonstrated. To them the 
Twenty-third and Fifty-first Psalms, the first chap- 
ter of the First Epistle of John and the fifth chapter 
of Romans are yea and amen in Christ Jesus by 
the law of Christian experience. It only takes one 
night in condemnation to prove that the way of the 
transgressor is hard and one minute in the exercise 
of faith in the blood of the Lamb settles the ques- 
tion of its efficacy to save. When a poor sinner saved 
by grace stands before the White Throne and in 
weakness begins to tell of God's matchless love and 
endless mercy I think the angels will cease singing 
and stand with uncovered heads to hear the simple 
story of love set forth in this tried Book. I com- 
mend it to every young man I address as the one 
book of precepts and promises that has been tested, 
not as a relic, but as a counselor and guide. It will 
guide you into all the glories of manhood, priest- 
hood and knightship. Hide it in your heart. Let 
nothing take it from you. Once there, no enemy 
can ever erase it. When all else wastes and dis- 
appears, God's Word will shine forth with lessons 
of life. 

There is an old legend of a chime of bells, con- 
structed by a genius and placed in the tower of a 
convent in the heart of Switzerland. In time of 



7 6 



Victory Assured. 



war he was banished from his native land. Years 
after, returning and nearing the border line of the 
homeland, he heard the w r inds sweeping through 
those famous bells and was overcome. Borne by 
the pure melody of those sweet tones, he entered 
his endless home. My brother, fix these precious 
promises in your heart that when your wanderings 
are all over and you near the eternal shores of that 
land of truth you may hear the sweet cadence, "I 
will come again and receive you unto myself.'' It 
has guarded others, it will guard you. A few years 
ago a mother returning to her home came to the 
bridge where she was wont to pass, but the brook 
had swollen and lifted and carried away the bridge. 
She halted, then stepped on the strand thrown across 
by the workmen. She ventured, then turned back, 
for the waters were too wild. But, fixing her eyes 
on the opposite shore, she walked steadily over. A 
friend met her with this salutation : "How dare 
you cross ?" Lifting her hand, she pointed to a cot- 
tage on the bank and said : "I have loved ones there 
who are waiting for me. I saw others cross, and 
knew I could." 

Brethren, when we come to the dark stream 
we will fix our eyes on heaven and with this Book 
of Books go steadily over, for we have loved ones 
on yonder shore awaiting our coming. 



V 



BELIEVING GOD. 

"Have faith in God." Mark n: 22. 

These are the words of Jesus, called forth by 
that disciple to whom we are indebted for many of 
the best sayings of the Master. Peter had a phi- 
losophic turn of mind. He always asked why. 
Standing in the presence of the fig tree, whose 
leaves had curled, whose roots had died, until the 
whole tree had become unsightly, without the pres- 
ence of any enemy or cause, he inquired how this 
change had been wrought, by what law had that 
thing of beauty become so hideous. Jesus, perceiv- 
ing his query, said : "Peter, make connection with 
the source of all power. Have faith in God, and this 
will be plain." In this He voiced a principle of 
universal application, for without faith nothing that 
now is ever would have been. The seas would 
never have been crossed, the forests swept, the 
mines opened or the cities builded. On hillside and 
in valley men stand with grain in hand ignorant of 
the inherent capability of growth necessary to har- 
vest; ignorant of the external appliances and un- 
able to create a kernel, yet believing in the presence 
and wisdom of the great Chemist. They can put to- 

77 



78 



Victory Assured. 



gether all the constituent parts of wheat, but cannot 
give it the power to reproduce its kind. Yet they 
put the last dollar into wheat to throw into the har- 
rowed face of the earth, yea, sometimes they put a 
mortgage on the old farm for seed, and go to some 
commercial centre and agree to furnish hundreds or 
thousands of bushels when they have not one kernel 
in sight. 

Were I permitted to spring to the front and 
direct the thought of thinking men and control the 
convictions of the rulers, I know of no words more 
potent than these words of Jesus, "Have faith in 
God." This gives to all a definite object for life, 
greater factors and energies. Faith always has a 
being made manifest, a pledge or promise to grasp, 
receive or reject. Without this none can intelli- 
gently believe ; for instance : I look for an architect 
and on entering the room I see evidence of plan, 
thought and conception by which I measure the 
building, for back of these walls, windows, lamps, 
pews, pulpit and altar was thought, and back of the 
thought was a thinker and I am face to face with an 
architect. He thought of a room into which men 
and women and children were to gather by day and 
by night, for the purpose of being addressed, hence 
this rostrum, these windows, these wires and this 
desk. Xow I am asked to assent to that as a fact. 
Back of these concrete walls there must have been 
a plan, a conception, back of the conception a 
thought, back of the thought a thinker, and I assent 



Believe in God. 



79 



to the fact of an architect, though I may not believe 
in him. Now all this may be seen in the hut down 
by the stream in yonder forest, where the hermit lays 
the stones on which to fry his fish. When I see the 
track of a hermit, I believe a hermit has been here. 
When I take a watch into my hand, so well adjusted 
as to run twenty-four hours without varying a 
minute, and yet so small as to be worn beneath a 
glove on a lady's finger and not be noticed, I assent 
to the existence of a watchmaker. So, on entering 
this man-house (man-home) I find it identified with 
other worlds and planets, and they are in motion ; 
and that this earth is a part of a great system, called 
the solar system, and that it is a part of other sys- 
tems, w T hich constitute one great whole, wherein 
millions of worlds are in motion, and have been for 
ages (I don't know how long), but they all move on 
without collision or loss of time, and I cry out with 
the Psalmist, "The heavens declare the glory of 
God and the firmament showeth His handiwork. 
Day unto day uttereth speech, and night unto night 
showeth knowledge. There is no speech nor lan- 
guage where their voice is not heard." 

But more, I am confronted by Him at every 
turn. That little bee moving so busily, has heard 
from Him this Summer, for the bee was not last 
Summer, and somebody has told him to look out 
for winter, lest he starve. Somebody has told the 
squirrel up here that the winter is to last a long 
time ; so I find him assorting the fruits and nuts, as 



go 



Victory Assured. 



philosophically as though he knew all about the 
future. He selects the apples and nuts that will 
keep the longest and stores them back in the hole, to 
live on when the perishable is gone. Who told him ? 
I set a trap and catch him and take him South, and 
he picks no more. He has heard of the change in 
demands. Some years ago a friend of mine went 
into the forest with his gun in search of game. On 
entering a thicket he saw a bird seemingly in great 
trouble. She disappeared but returned quickly and 
dropped a leaf over a nest in which her young were 
nestling, and then seemed so calm that my friend 
said he approached the tree and sat down to learn 
the sequel. A huge serpent was wending his way 
up that tree. When he got where he was to take her 
young, he touched the leaf, stiffened and fell to the 
ground, while the mother-bird lifted the leaf and 
rejoiced with her young. Tell me who told that 
bird what leaf to get, and the young birds not to 
touch it? God. And has He forgotten us, ex- 
hausted His medium so that He cannot speak to us ? 
I cast about and find a letter, written in the interests 
of men. Now, I shall not take your time this morn- 
ing to prove the authority and credibility of this 
book. It is enough for my present purpose to know 
that He who wrote the book knew where I should 
be, what I should need and how to help me. If I 
get into trouble and go to the post office, and there 
find that somebody has knowledge of my misfortune 
and has put into a letter a check sufficient to meet 



Believe in God. 



81 



all demands — the next time I get into trouble I shall 
be very likely to go straight to the post office, and 
if then I found the same thing occurred, I should 
be likely to learn the way to the post office as oft as 
I got into trouble. Well, forty years ago I found 
myself in trouble. God's laws were not pleasing to 
me. Like other little men, I got to thinking I could 
criticise the movements of God. Something or 
somebody was wrong. I found in the first Epistle 
of John, first chapter, ninth verse, a recipe. I took 
it and it met the case. It brought harmony within 
and all things were easily adjusted, and for forty 
years I have been going to this bock in times of 
peace and in times of war ; in prosperity and in 
adversity ; at home and among strangers, and it 
has never failed me. I accept it to be my Father's 
letter written in my interest. But this is not neces- 
sarily saving faith. It is simply assenting to facts, 
such as rational thinking men are forced to accept. 
"What, then, is it to believe savingly ? It is to appre- 
ciate or utilize the facts received. 

That little boy may slip going out from this 
service, and may break his arm. I think I could 
convince him that his bones could be adjusted. He 
accepts my statement, but that does not set the 
bones. What will? Put the boy into the hands of 
a surgeon and let him apply his skill and the bones 
may be adjusted and the arm saved. I read "It shall 
be well with the righteous.'' I assent to the fact, 
but not until I seek righteousness is it well with me. 



82 



Victory Assured. 



The salvation is in the righteousness of the right. 
Some one may say it shall be well with all men. 
Yea, but that is not faith. He who builds on that 
statement presumes, for there is no authentic prom- 
ise made by any one. He who presumes takes the 
case in his own hands, while he who believes relies 
on the strength of the promiser. Let me illustrate : 
When God sought a man to lead Israel out of Egypt, 
He told Moses that He would go with him and 
give him rest. Closes accepted the conditions, and 
wdien on the banks of the sea gave orders to move 
into the waters, believing that God would fulfill His 
promise. And so He did, for the waters stood asidq* 
and Israel moved on unharmed. Xow the hosts 
of Pharoah presumed that if Israel could do that 
they could. But they had no promise. They 
plunged in and have not been heard from since. Be 
careful when you presume. Be confident when you 
believe. But the exhortation is faith in God. Faith 
in itself accomplishes nothing; it is in what, as in 
whom you believe. He who believes in himself as 
in men or organizations, will sooner or later fail, 
not because of his faith, but because of the limita- 
tions of the man. There are men in whom I believe, 
but there are some things I would not trust with 
them. Why? Because they are human and, there- 
fore, limited in their powers. There may come a 
time when it would be impossible for them to do 
all they desire to do. I once attempted to carry a 
man off the battlefield after both lower limbs had 



Believe in God. 



83 



been shattered. I ran perhaps three times the 
length of this church and I came to a panting halt. 
He said, "I know you would, Sergeant ; but I know 
you haven't the power/'' I took his dying mes- 
sage, and left him to die, while I escaped with this 
thought ringing in my mind, "Oh, that I had 
power.'' 

So there are some organizations that I believe 
in, but none with which I would trust the salvation 
of my soul, because they are human in their con- 
stituency. But when I reach up and out beyond the 
human and the limited, and put my hand in the hand 
of the Infinite, I am beyond the possibility of fail- 
ure. He is able, no matter how changed or forbid- 
ding the circumstances. Did you ever note the 
strength and limit of Jewish faith in the case of 
Mary and Martha at the grave of Lazarus, their 
brother? [Martha said, "Hadst thou been here my 
brother had not died." Jesus said, "Thy brother 
shall rise again." "Yes, Lord, in the resurrection." 
That was wonderful faith, but it had a limit, for 
when Jesus said, "Take away the stone at the mouth 
of the cave," Martha and Mary both said, "My 
Lord, the circumstances are changed. It is too 
late." "But," said Jesus, "I am not subject to any 
circumstances. I am the resurrection. Take away 
the stone." Then their Christian faith stepped out 
and took hold on God and the dead arose. Here 
Jewish limitation stepped over into divine catholic- 
ity and power. An intelligent grasp on the infinite 



§4 



Victory Assured. 



lifts out of all limitations, such as brings perfect 
rest. Why, then, are men not saved when we be- 
lievingly ask for their salvation? Because another 
power is involved, that is the will of the man. To 
save a man against his will, if possible, would de- 
stroy his manhood, and mar God's fatherhood. We 
may bring conviction but he must yield in order to 
be saved. 

Faith in God brings man into a larger life. 
Jesus' coming has opened the door to a larger life. 
He becomes the ultimatum of the soul's desire in 
the interests of immortality. "I am come that ye 
might have life more abundantly." said Jesus. We 
are no longer shut up between birth and death. We 
take our observations no longer from the mud- 
house with the five windows, and by faith we see 
the triumph from afar. By faith he brings them 
nigh. Science and art. literature and music, hope 
and charity, have become the servants of the faith. 
Said Jesus to the confounded and defeated dis- 
ciples, "If thou canst believe, ail things are pos- 
sible." We have never measured up to this infinite 
factor, which is the gift of God and therefore reach- 
able. We fail not so much for lack of faith as for 
an intelligent use of it. Faith never saves anybody, 
but it is the person or agency in which we believe 
that saves. A man may believe conscientiously in 
an error and be cursed thereby. I had two friends 
in my native State. One believed there was money 
in a mine opened at Mount Desert, the other be- 



Beueve in God. 



8S 



Heved just as honestly and sincerely that the Sulli- 
van mine would make large returns and invested 
his all in it and made a fortune. The other lost all. 
An intelligent anchoring of your faith in God brings 
all God has promised and becomes the mightiest 
factor known in the world of forces. Were we 
able to harness all winds, Niagaras, electric cur- 
rents and sunbeams, they could never approximate 
the force of a small child in the exercise of God- 
given faith. 

In Providence, R. I., a great Corliss engine fur- 
nishes power to pump the water for the city and 
runs so quietly as not to disturb ordinary conversa- 
tion, but a child ascends with his little cup, turns a 
faucet and the whole engine trembles. I have 
kneeled by the side of a little child when his prayer 
shook my inmost soul. Ah ! I like this word 
"abundantly." It is an overflowing word. What is 
an abundance with God? How much does He 
mean when He uses the word? He says, "As the 
stars of heaven" for multitude, but can we compre- 
hend the abundance of stars in number? The 
phrase means vastly more to-day than it did to the 
Apostle Paul. The telescope has multiplied every 
star until hundreds become thousands and thousands 
millions ; thus is God's multiplication of energies, 
faculties, endowments and graces. Biblical utter- 
ances are sometimes overwhelming in their intensity 
of thought. Study the words in the Apostle Paul's 
letter to the Ephesians when he prays that the saints 



86 



Victory Assured. 



"Being rooted and grounded in love may be able to 
comprehend with all saints what is the breadth and 
length and depth and height and to know the love 
of Christ which passes knowledge, that ye might be 
filled with all the fulness of God." Meditate upon 
the wondrous truths clothed in these words : 
"God, who is rich in mercy for His great love 
wherewith He hath loved us even when we were 
dead in sins, hath quickened us together with 
Christ and hath raised us up together and made us 
sit together in heavenly places in Christ Jesus — that 
in the ages to come He might show the exceeding 
riches of His grace in His kindness toward us 
through Christ Jesus." ^ 

When we have done our utmost to unfold these 
great passages, there remains an endless depth of 
meaning yet undisturbed. For it doth not yet ap- 
pear how much our Father has in store for his chil- 
dren. God's illustrations are so large. "As the 
heavens are high above the earth, so are His 
thoughts above our thoughts." William McKin- 
ley's life overleaped the boundaries of death and 
dropped into God's orchestra and left the whole 
world singing "Nearer, My God, to Thee." I 
wonder what God meant more than to enlarge 
Abram's thought when He told him that He 
would multitply his seed like the sands on the sea- 
shore ? When will mortals measure up to that one 
illustration of God's increase? I have often felt 
like saying, "Oh! Daniel, tell me, how you felt 



Believe in God. 



87 



when God said, 'They that turn many to righteous- 
ness shall shine as the stars for ever and ever.' " 

But neither of these touch the tides of that im- 
mortal sweep, given in life more abundantly. Life 
is immeasurable and endless. Faith in God brings 
that abundance of life. Physically they are made 
larger, more perfectly developed, rounded out and 
symmetrically builded, for they are as trees planted 
by the rivers of waters, whose leaves do not wither 
and whose fruit is not blighted. Away up on the 
shores of the Great Bear Lake is a little scrubby, 
dwarf cedar tree. It belongs to the family of the 
great Lebanon trees, but up there it has struggled a 
century for existence. When planted in rich soil 
and transferred to congenial atmosphere, at once it 
enlarges its trunk, sends deeper its roots, lifts higher 
its head and expresses more perfectly the new life 
awakened and called forth by this transfer. So 
the coming of man into the atmosphere of the 
Christian. He is brought into a healthful condition 
and given an inspiration, which makes even the life 
we now live in the flesh more abundant. But in 
no sense does this illustrate the fulness of that life 
w r hich is within, when once it is clarified and bur- 
nished with the brightness of the King ; for it pours 
forth the possessions of a new creation. Many 
wicked wretches go about the world with well- 
developed bodies, which are little more than homes 
of ignorance and vice, in which angels try titles for 
kingship. Christ did not come to develop giants in 



88 



Victory Assured. 



physical strength, but rather to turn that strength by 
the use of the mind into right channels. We speak 
of Samson and Hercules and admire them. But 
they appear to the best advantage where their 
physical force is guided by loyalty and patriotism \ 
for thought, emotion and affection can never ex- 
press themselves in the mere enlargement of the 
body. When love begins to minister there must be 
a new world as well as a new creature. If you shut 
man up in this world and give him no other field, 
he immediately becomes a very small creature. No 
matter how large his plans or how important he 
may think them, he will never complete them, and 
the world in which he lives will never be enriched 
by his efforts. He is so small that even the trees 
in the forest mock him and live to rustle their leaves 
over his children's children, until generations sleep 
beneath their shade. Oceans laugh and point the 
proudest representative of time to their powers, 
now sleeping in the waters. Stars shine on through 
the ages undisturbed, while nations and generations 
come and go the way of all the earth. "The days 
of our years are three-score years and then ; and if 
by reason of strength they may be four-score years, 
yet is their strength, labor and sorrow, for it is soon 
cut off and we fly away." -Never until life lifts its 
form to join the family of the infinite and find rep- 
resentation in that land whither the glory of the 
nation is to be brought, does it take to itself value. 
We are too often satisfied with the beauty of those 



BeijEve in God. 



8 9 



things which pass away with a single presentation. 
The picture painted on the window pane by the 
king of the morning, who mixes his paints in the 
founts of an ice-house, may surpass in beauty any- 
thing that art has ever approached. You may find 
more glory on the lawn of a country home, on a 
summer's morning than can be brought into a 
cluster of diamonds ; but these are comparatively 
worthless because there is no law T by which they can 
be preserved. This fact ought to enter into our 
estimate of values. Those things that perish in 
using ought not to be compared with those inter- 
ests that broaden the mind, enrich the heart and 
are intensified in value by age. There are some 
things that increase in strength, beauty and power 
as the ages go by. -'Abundantly" is God's use of 
a word in view of enriching and impressing an 
idea, and, if I mistake not, He uses it in this con- 
nection in view of strengthening the preceding 
clause which carries with it the idea of a super- 
abundant life, and places the passage in the same 
category with Paul's wonderful climax where we 
are to have the Christ life so abundantly as to make 
it a "Far more exceeding and eternal weight of 
glory." 

Jesus not only raised Lazarus to life, but He re- 
stored to health and ordered the grave clothes re- 
moved in order that he might have the fulness of 
life. So to-day He removes or intensifies all things 
to our endless good in view of the abundance of 



9o 



Victory Assured. 



His mercy. This He does by lifting them out of 
all limitations. Men may be made perfect in 
obedience in this life, but never in manhood,, for 
time is too short. We may die ignorant of many 
things ; but death is to him who believes, a message 
sent to direct us into broader fields, richer treasures 
and grander opportunities. Oh, what would mor- 
tals do in these days of larger interests when mil- 
lions and billions measure the output,, and wedge 
and screw give place to dynamite and electricity, 
were it not for the larger life, the clearer vision 
and the broader faith? But this faith brings man 
into a larger world. I once stood on the lawn 
watching a nest of birds. The mother was clothed 
in plumage so rich as not to be perfected in our 
Northern climate and the song with a richness never 
reached in the chill of the North. I began to feel 
sad for the little birds, when God whispered to my 
spirit saying, "I have a summerland where frost 
never comes and I know how to teach them to fly 
away when the time comes." I entered my home, 
where a sweet-spirited boy was wasting, with a 
new conception of the possibilities of faith in God 
to perfect the trinity of manhood in His summer- 
land. 

When a boy my mother was very careful to im- 
press me with the study of biography, and she 
taught me to revere the life and character of Chris- 
topher Columbus. A few years ago, when his 
statue was presented to this country, at Philadel- 



Believe in God. 



9i 



phia, I first saw the form wrapped in the European 
and American flags. Soon the flags began to un- 
furl from the form of him whom I almost wor- 
shipped, and I shouted myself hoarse ; for with his 
appearance came an avalanche of all those lessons 
of childhood and their long-slumbering inspira- 
tions. But there was another, of whom she was 
more careful to teach me — Jesus the Christ, wrapt 
in the Old and Xew Dispensations ; and some day 
angels will roll away the clouds and not the form 
but the living Christ will appear, while men and 
angels shout : 

"All hail the power of Jesus' Name, 

Let angels prostrate faill; 
Bring forth the royal diadem 

And crown Him Lord of all." 

We have little knowledge of that life which is 
fanned by the wings of ministering angels and fed 
on the hidden manna of heaven ; but God knows 
how to give a life higher significance, a broader 
catholicity and a grander spirituality than we have 
any conception of at present. He will enable you 
to feel the kingliness of heirship and put on the 
express image of His glory, for the Saviour said in 
His prayers, "Father, I pray that they may be one 
even as we are one and the glory thou gavest Me I 
have given them." 

So I exhort you this morning to stretch your 
minds over the sublime energies of God's mind, 
that He may show you worlds yet unexplored, 



92 



Victory Assured. 



waters whose depths have never been sounded, and 
stars whose swiftness no man can yet measure and 
beholding His glory, we shall be changed into His 
image, from glory to glory, even as by the spirit 
of the Lord. 



VI 



PRESENTING THE CHRIST. 

"And straightway he preached Christ in the Syna- 
gogues, that He is the Son of God." — Acts 9 : 20. 

It was a great event in the history of the world 
when Saul of Tarsus met Jesus of Nazareth ; an 
event that has touched more and larger interests 
than any event since the coming of the Holy Ghost 
on Pentecost. The placing of the powers and tal- 
ents, and the identification of such a man as Saul 
of Tarsus, his catholicity of spirit, intensity of con- 
viction and intellectual training with any system of 
benefits or ministry, would have been great at that 
time ; but to secure such a man as an apostle of 
grace in the dawning of the Spirit's dispensation, 
was an event too large for angels to comprehend. 
They still desire to look into it, and in the eternal 
ages we shall praise God for the conversion of Saul 
of Tarsus. The fulness of conditions, as well as of 
time had come for just such a work as he and only 
he could do. Nature, culture and grace had gifted 
him for the hour ; the law and the prophets had 
established confidence in the plan and purpose of 
God to purify unto himself a people ; the advent and 
ministry, death and resurrection and ascension of 

93 



94 



Victory Assured. 



Jesus had created a great expectancy. The coming* 
of the Holy Ghost as teacher and comforter had 
established confidence in the continuance and con- 
tinuity of Jesus' ministry with power, until the 
world was ready for some great and permanent 
movement. The followers of Jesus were only a little 
removed from materialism in its worst form. Just 
one step from that form of superstition that held to 
gods many and such as could be taken with them, 
to be called on in times of danger. They felt that 
they must see their leader as they had seen Jesus. 
Few, if any, had any clear conception of the divine 
incarnation of the Christ-life. 

The call was for a man who could personify the 
Saviour in their midst, and Saul of Tarsus was that 
man. He had been crucified with Christ and filled 
with the Holy Ghost. This enabled him to call Jesus 
Lord; to see Him, not only as prophet, priest and 
friend, but as God. To him from that hour, God 
had come down in Christ to rescue lost men. His 
crucifixion had enlarged his horizon and quickened 
his conception, and filled him with an inspiration 
and hope all immortal. Buddha tarried under his 
wisdom tree until illuminated and inspired he went 
forth to establish a system of thought in which mil- 
lions have found comfort. Mahomet waited alone 
in a cave in the desert until there was born in his 
spirit a desire to live for some purpose, such as led 
to that system of worship and devotion wherein mil- 
lions are housed. But Saul tarried with God until 



Presenting the Christ. 



95 



the thunders of Sinai ceased and the light of Her- 
mon grew pale, and immortality was voiced beyond 
the grave. Then, in the light of the resurrection, he 
saw the light of the world; yea, he saw God. Oh, 
what a moment in the history of time that was, w r hen 
Jesus severed Saul from the old Adamic stock, and 
put him into his wounds and in his blindness he 
cried: "Saviour, look with pitying eye; Saviour, 
help me or I die/' Then he felt the flow of the 
divine life surging through his whole being and 
shouted : "I live, yet not I but Christ lives in me." 
It was that experience that sent Saul forth with a 
life that was large enough to serve. It was that kind 
of a conviction that made Luther and Knox, Wesley 
and Calvin and their successors unconquerable. 
Many are w T ondering why conversion does not make 
all men mighty. Such need to learn that conversion 
only converts what is to be converted, and God can 
only sanctify (or set apart) that which is brought 
to Him to be sanctified or set apart. There may 
have been others as well fitted for the work of that 
hour as Saul of Tarsus was. If so, they did not 
appear. Who among the men of the first century 
was so well equipped by nature and training to meet, 
hold and direct the Jews as was Saul of Tarsus ? At 
that time they were a great people. They held a 
large place in the thought of the religious world. 
They claimed the right to hold the oracles of God ; 
to answer all questions and exercise all religious 
rites. Their priests and their temple had no com- 



96 



Victory Assured. 



petitors. For a man to lift his hand or voice in ques- 
tioning their interpretation of the law was a crime 
to be punished by death without a hearing. Such a 
man must be crucified as a blasphemer and a dis- 
turber of the peace ; and yet, they were a great 
people and held much that was sacred and that must 
be retained. Their devotion and loyalty was worthy 
of highest commendation. Where will you find a 
richer expression of loyalty than in the reply of the 
captives down by the waters of the Euphrates, "If I 
forget thee, oh, Jerusalem, let my right hand forget 
her cunning; if I do not remember thee, let my 
tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth, if I prefer 
not Jerusalem above my chief joy." Where will you 
find a scene or expression of more genuine devotion 
than that in the courts of Jerusalem to-day? Go 
into what is called the "Jew's wailing place," where 
fragments of the old wall remain. There you may 
find the old Jew in tears as he reads and prays ; there 
he rocks to and fro in spasms of grief and breathes 
his prayers into the chinks in the walls, crying for 
the glory that has departed and the re-establishing 
of the fires on the altars to them so sacred. 

To enlarge the form and yet preserve the spirit, 
demanded a peculiar man — one trained in all their 
methods, able to feel as they felt, and yet capable 
of adjusting the forms to the demands of the age 
and the growth of human thought. Saul of Tarsus 
was that man. He had been trained in the Hebrew 
faith. He was thoroughly versed and able to ex- 



Presenting the Christ. 



97 



plain the law in all its varied applications. Let him 
speak for himself and recite his experience. "Art 
thou a Hebrew? So am I. If any man thinketh he 
hath whereof he might trust in the flesh, I am that 
man ; circumcised the eighth day, of the stock of 
Israel, of the Tribe of Benjamin, an Hebrew of the 
Hebrews, as touching the law a Pharisee, and after 
the most straightest sect I lived a Pharisee. I have 
tested Judaism and know wherein it fails ; I came 
from the very heart of Israel." Such a man could 
tear off the wrappings of Judaism and expose to 
the Gentile world the weakness of that system, per- 
verted by the worldly priest. Only such a man could 
ever have written the letter to the Romans or have 
felt as the author of that letter felt when he wrote, 
"I could be accursed from Christ for my brethren's 
and kinsmen's sake." He knew what had been 
done for the Jews and how much they had accom- 
plished as a people. He could say I could wish my- 
self accursed from Christ for my brethren, my kins- 
men according to the flesh ; he loved the Jew as none 
other could, who had never been one. 

Who better equipped to meet the Greeks, then 
in their glory ? He was familiar with the philosophy 
of Zenophen and Zeno, Socrates and Plato. He was 
familiar with Grecian art and literature and could 
explain every phase of the worship of their gods 
and unravel the mysteries of the unknown God. 
Only such a man could command a hearing among 
the authorities, but Saul of Tarsus was born in a 



9 8 



Victory Assured. 



city of schools and universities, not to be surpassed 
by Alexandria, Athens or Rome. Born of scholarly 
parents in the city of Tarsus,, where art and culture 
made its boast amid wealth, splendor and learning, 
he spent his youth in a city where Cicero found con- 
genial companions, and lived during his term as Gov- 
ernor of the Province. Saul was so impressed by 
the educational interests of his early home that in 
every letter he refers to the bazaars, schools, palaces, 
statues, ships and fortifications of Tarsus. To him 
it was no mean city. He was early fitted for college 
and sent to Jerusalem, where he had the best of 
advantages found in his age, his favorite teacher 
being Galmaliel. This enabled him to speak with 
ease in the presence of Kings and potentates, and 
caused Felix to tremble before his mighty utter- 
ances. So you ask why then were not more of the 
great men of that age converted? I answer for the 
same reason that they were not in Jesus' time, and 
are not to-day — because of the unbelief of the 
people. Men of renown have gone to their graves 
through tears and sacrifices with few converts. 

Again : Rome was mistress of the world. Her 
forces commanded attention. She had the best 
system of military power known in that age of the 
world. Her ships were on all seas ; her soldiers in 
all ports ; her courts settled all appeals. To meet 
them and defend any new system, or direct attention 
to any new King meant death, and yet we hear this 
new convert saying : "I am ready to preach the 



Printing the: Christ. 99 



Gospel unto you who are at Rome also; for it is 
the power of God unto salvation to every one that 
believeth, to the Jew first, and also to the Greek." 
He could say that with an unction no other preacher 
ever had, for he was born a Roman. He knew of 
their love and thirst for power. To him it was 
supreme till he passed over the line into the power 
of Jehovah's love. Listen, ye men of this world, 
to a man by birth a Roman, by education a Grecian, 
in religion a Jew, yea, a Pharisee, and then by con- 
version a Christian. Such a man could mould, 
direct and guide the people into all truth, by the 
energy of the Holy Ghost. 

What would you expect sach a man to do, when 
he was converted? Preach? Herald? Well, that 
is just what he did. He preached ! Christ had 
entered into him as the spirit enters the temple, and 
the life of the man was filled, preserved and directed 
by the higher life, even the life of Christ. What 
else could he do other than to preach? That was 
the natural thing for him to do. Was ever any- 
body surprised to find Alexander hastening along 
the Mediterranean shore, eager to spread the civil- 
ization of Greece over Asia and Africa? Are you 
surprised when you read of Julius Caesar pressing 
the government of Rome to western Europe or that 
Columbus cried "Westward" on the ship's deck in 
ocean's storm? Nay, these men were converts and 
were impelled by their convictions. A knowledge 
of Paul's history will convince anyone that his con- 
9 w ' 



IOO 



Victory Assured. 



viction was more intense than they all. His was a 
religious conviction. Prior to his conversion he 
could stand out against Jesus and all His followers 
in conscientious defiance of the Gospel and arrest^ 
imprison or see murder in defense of his position 
as a Pharisee. Seemingly the murder of James 
and imprisonment and release of Peter, the echoes 
of Calvary did not move him. Nay, with the Roman 
soldiers at his command, unmoved by the echoes of 
Gethsemane, Calvary and the Lamb. The stoning 
of Stephen, the dying of Ananias and Sapphira, the 
opening heavens and the dying prayer of the Master, 
to which the soldiers stopped their ears. Yet Saul, 
untouched by sympathy and undisturbed by the 
counsel of his professor in school, went forth to 
silence the Xazarenes. But when converted he 
straightway preached the doctrine his new faith 
embraced. Such men move the world. They be- 
lieve something and rejoice — not only to defend — 
but to proclaim. He would go to Jerusalem though 
the whole city of Ephesus hung about his neck in 
tearful entreaty for his life. With Luther he would 
go, though the troops of hell were there as numer- 
ous as the tiles on the housetops. Defying stripes, 
imprisonment, shipwrecks, martyrdom, he utters a 
triumphant cry, "None of these things move me." 

When did he preach? Straightway. When he 
was converted, which was not, as some teached, a 
sudden act at the hand of an overpowering con- 
queror. Oh, no, that could have never been. 



Pr^sextixCx the Christ. 



ioi 



Forced obedience availeth nothing in God's king- 
dom. Indeed, it never occurs. Salvation never de- 
stroys the manliness of man nor the fatherhood of 
God. Saul of Tarsus was not suddenly smitten 
down by a stroke and forced into an acknowledg- 
ment of Christ as his Saviour. Nay, he stood look- 
ing on Stephen when the blood rolled over the 
scarred face, and he fell into the arms of Jesus say- 
ing, "Lord Jesus receive my spirit/' and then, look- 
ing calmly on his ignorant persecutors, said, "Lord, 
lay not this sin to their charge." Starting from such 
a scene, Paul heard one hundred and one prophesies 
thundering in his scholarly mind. Yet, the prayer 
was unto him like unto the Spirit of the promised 
Messiah. Perhaps he may have recalled the words 
of his professor in Jerusalem, at the time of Peter's 
imprisonment : "If this be of man it will come to 
naught, if of God ye cannot overthrow it, lest haply 
ye find yourself fighting against God." When he 
heard the great gates of Damascus and saw Hermon 
his brain reeled, his heart grew faint, light of his 
own thought touched by the searchlight of heaven 
flooded his soul, and he cried : "Who are thou ?" 
Had Jesus answered saying, "I am the Messiah," 
Saul would doubtless have said, "I knew thou hadst 
not come." But when he answered, "I am Jesus, 
whom thou persecutest," the chain of Saul's argu- 
ment- was broken, and he cried out, "Lord, what 
wilt thou hare me do ?" By that road Saul passed 
out of Judaism into Christianity — a change too great 



102 



Victory Assured. 



and radical to be instantaneous. The earthquake, 
tornado and cyclone may report their arrival sud- 
denly, but who can tell how long they have been 
preparing to report? So with Saul's conversion. 
He yielded, gave up the fight, surrendered suddenly 
— so did Robert E. Lee — but he may have been 
hours, days or even weeks coming to it. The 
saintly face of Stephen, the peerless prayer, an hun- 
dred and one prophesies ringing in his intelligent 
nature, may have overcome him and may have been 
crying for light when Jesus approached him. 

What did he preach ? Christ as the Son of God. 
He had learned Jesus, whom he feared most, to be 
his friend, and as an honest man he must stand up 
and defend the cross and cause of Him whom he 
had found to be the Messiah. He found the man 
Jesus who had hurled the great truth at and 
through Judaism until the foundations of the fathers 
trembled and shook, to be the word and voice of 
Jehovah. Immediately his hatred was turned to 
love, and he went forth to correct the misrepresenta- 
tion of other days. The baptism and the reception of 
the Holy Ghost equipped Saul of Tarsus for a work 
no other could do. His unyielding will swung into 
line, and his all-controlling purpose said : "This 
one thing I do." That motto held him ever after 
to the work assigned him. His conception of duty 
was like that of Daniel, Knox, Calvin and Wesley. 
Nothing could persuade him to turn from his wonted 
course. He had seen his Lord and Saviour and 



Presenting the Christ. 



103 



found him whom he took to he his enemy to be his 
best friend. 

We are told of two soldiers at Gettysburg's fight 
who met in deadly conflict. One fell and the living, 
supposing he had conquered his enemy, looked 
calmly into the face of his dead comrade only to find 
that it was his brother whom he had killed, he 
having been pressed into the Southern service. 
Imagine the feelings of that brother. Paul verily 
thought he was doing God's service, but he saw 
Jesus and heard Him say, "Saul, why persecutest 
thou Me?" He saw that it was his brother, and 
cried, "Lord, what wilt thou have me to do ?" And 
from that hour he preached Christ as his friend and 
Saviour. And though the people were afraid of 
him and called him the wicked fellow, and the perse- 
cutor, yet he stood as calm as the eternal hills. It 
was not a casual look into the face of Jesus that 
filled Paul with such undying devotion. He saw 
the immeasurable depths of Jesus' love for lost men, 
and that love begot within him a new life. 

I once stood with a friend looking at the statue 
of Benjamin Franklin and supposed I had taken in 
the whole man, when a wiser than I said, "Come 
nearer and read what this great man has said and 
done." Each sentence carved upon the marble re- 
vealed the secret of his greatness until the statue 
was all aglow with transparent glory. I saw the 
boy merge into manhood, and the man grow into 
statesmanship, until his timidity gave place to 



104 



Victory Assured. 



diplomacy, his measles of doubt gave way to faith 
and confidence, and the Bible became the Word of 
God and the Sonship of the Divine shook France like 
a leaf in the sweep of a cyclone. Then my soul 
took on the proportions of its maker and designer 
and longed for recognition in the fatherhood of 
God. So Paul looked into the face of Jesus until he 
was changed into the same image, from glory to 
glory as by the spirit of the Lord, and cried, "For 
me to live is Christ.'' 1 From that minute Christ was 
the sole theme of his preaching. The object of his 
study and the subject of his discourse. He made 
it his business to herald Jesus as the Christ, the Son 
of God. He did not load himself with all the theo- 
ries of men, but gave himself unreservedly to the 
preaching of this one truth. Jesus is the Christ, 
God's son. I had charge of a company of men for 
two years. They were soldiers. I remember one 
man who always gave me great trouble. He was 
constantly loading himself and his horse with so 
many things that it took all his time to keep them 
and himself out of the enemy's hands in time of 
battle. One day I lost him. The enemy got him, 
equipage and all. So there are many Christians 
who are constantly investigating. Always loading 
their faith with dogmas and their hands with meth- 
ods. Their whole time is filled with research for 
matter to defend the dogmas entertained and they 



Presenting the Christ. 



105 



are always ready to argue. Satan is sure to take 
advantage of such a man. Oh, that the Holy Ghost 
may intensify the one thought of salvation in and 
through Jesus Christ until the pulpit and press cry; 
"Behold, the Lamb of God, which taketh away the 
sins of the world/' 

Where did he preach? Where would you look 
for a man of Paul's dimensions to appear? In the 
synagogue. Great men identify themselves with 
great organizations, where they will be held respon- 
sible and answerable for their words and deeds. 
Little men sometimes think themselves of so much 
importance that it would be conferring a great favor 
on any organization for them to unite with it. They 
ignore the sacred claim of God. Such herald their 
utterances and offer their sacrifices in every place. 
But Paul did not belong to that class of reformers. 
He straightway preached in the synagogue. His 
Master entered into the synagogue, began, con- 
tinued and ended His ministry in the synagogue, 
and he would follow Him. He would have a home 
where he could train, arm and send forth leaders 
who would inspire confidence and marshal the host 
of Israel against the forces of evil. This was Wes- 
ley's great power. Where are Whitfield's converts ? 
Where Wesley's ? 

Just before a great battle in which 36,000 Prus- 
sians conquered 80,000 Austrians, Frederick the 
Great called his officers together and said : "The 
battle of to-morrow will decide great destinies. I 



io6 Victory Assured. 

expect great things of your individual commands. 
If any of you feel afraid, step down and out and I 
will discharge you before you frighten others/' 
None moved. "Then," said he, "I shall be in the 
front, in the rear and on the right and left ; whomso- 
ever I find doing his duty I will honor." 

The Prince of all conquests has sent His apostles 
and ministers forth w T ith like counsel. "Lo, I am with 
you unto the end of the earth." "To him that over- 
cometh will I grant to sit with Me in My throne, 
even as I have overcome and am sat down with My 
Father in His throne." Oh, for an army of men like 
St. Augustine, whose double nature made him both 
Esau and Jacob. A student of Moses and Paul by 
night and Plato and Socrates by day ; converted 
while reading the thirteenth and fourteenth verses 
of the thirteenth chapter of Paul's letter to the 
Romans. As he read and looked into that putting of 
sin and salvation he said: "This will lead me to 
death," but that will open a field for usefulness and 
hope, and though he was then thirty-two years old. 
yet he literally revolutionized the theology of the 
world. Oh, that we could realize the infinite possi- 
bilities which we lose by refusing to do as our 
fathers were wont to do. Think of Saul of Tarsus, 
from the human standpoint. A Jew by nature, a 
Pharisee by profession, with a thorn in the flesh. 
"What that was no one knows, so that all who fail 
may think they have it," and yet, touched by the 
power of God, he went forth to revolutionize the 



Presenting the Christ. 107 



whole world, and to-day is read in all languages, 
and his words are overturning systems, destroying 
superstitions and illuminating hearts in all the 
earth, while heaven gives him the highest seat in the 
Court of Judges. His circuit is greatly enlarged. 
He is now preaching glad tidings of great joy to 
the nations of the earth, neither is he wearied, op- 
pressed, poor, deserted or defeated. Nay, all the 
combined forces of evil cannot silence one pulpit 
in which Jesus is preached according to Paul's con- 
ception of Him as the Son of God. 

Saul of Tarsus was my ideal man. Of all the 
long list of Apostles and teachers, he stands at the 
head. He could not refrain from preaching. Con- 
version is sure to send such men forth as heralds 
of their new faith. Thousands halt here, knowing 
that if converted they would be forced by the law 
of consistency to herald the truth. This is not a 
lone case. God has always honored men of convic- 
tion when conversion identified them with His cause 
and His body. He found Constantine in York, but 
did nothing for him until he was converted. Luther 
in W ittemburg, Wesley in Epworth, Whitfield in 
Gloucester and Moody in Chicago ; but they would 
never have been heard from had they not been con- 
verted. But when they entered the household of 
faith and were commissiond of God they went forth 
to immortalize themselves in deeds of mercy, and 
when stars cease to shine and the bell is tolled they 
will live. Mr. Moody while in Manchester, labored 



io8 



Victory Assured. 



long and patiently with a young man under just this 
fear. At last he yielded and, being converted, sat 
listening to Mr. Moody's explanation of a similar 
case, whereupon the young man sprang to his feet 
with great enthusiasm and said, "That's me, that's 
me." His conversion turned his whole life into 
another channel, and every power and energy of 
his being was henceforth thrown into the work of 
God. This conversion does for everyone. There 
is no law that measures the man more absolutely 
than the law of conversion. You see just what 
the man is spiritually by his movements. Oh ! for 
an awakening to the awful responsibility resting on 
the sons and daughters of the triumphant hosts now 
in glory. 

I have read of a mother who felt the struggle 
of her child and, looking, saw the child was dying 
in her arms in the church during the service. She 
sprang and called for help, and the child was saved 
by the skill of her physician. Brethren, this poor, 
lost world for which our Master endured the cross 
is dying in our arms. How can we be so indiffer- 
ent? How can we refrain from crying unto our 
Great Physician, who is able to save to the utter- 
most all who come unto him? If we had the same 
definite sense of their destitution, we would be 
more in earnest. I remember in my childhood a 
man who startled the whole town one Sabbath 
morning, as he dashed through the streets with 
his horse covered with foam. He halted at the 



Presenting the Christ. 109 

door of our family physician, and the poor horse 
fairly staggered. Why so cruel to the beast ? Be- 
cause ten miles away that man's son was dying' 
with cholera, and he must have a physician, nothing' 
else was of any moment. We admired his earnest- 
ness and followed him with tearful eyes, and prayed 
that God would spare his boy. So to-day the great 
need of man is a sense of the vast issue of life; the 
feeling that "the King's business demands haste/' 



no Victory Assured. 



VII 



SOXSHIP. 

"Beloved, now are we the Sons of God, and it doth 
not yet appear what we shall be, but we know that when 
He shall appear we shall be like Him, for we shall see 
Him as He is." — I John 3 : 2. 

These words are associated with some of the 
most sublime truths of holy record. They consti- 
tute one of the sublimest pictures found in the apos- 
tle's letters. We stand in the presence of the Sons 
of God, heirs of inexplorable wealth and endless in- 
crease. Pessimists and agnostics have used these 
words to support their theories of uncertainty and 
ignorance, but to the thoughtful they state a great 
fact and then give the reason why we, having that 
fact, cannot anticipate its accumulations. "We are 
now. Sons of God'' and are to be all that that car- 
ries with it, plus what God can make of us, which 
will not appear until the pattern appears. This is 
true of all things subjected to the law of growth 
and development. 

The newly-sown field cannot disclose the harvest 
to those who have never seen a field of ripened 
grain. Xo more can he who finds an egg or a lit- 
tle black seed. To him it is worthless. The seed 
must be sown, at the proper time, in prepared soil 

in 



112 



Victory Assured. 



and the sower must wait the product of growth, 
that the external forces and appliances may bring 
forth a stalk; which may be evidence of life, but 
what kind of life? That doesn't yet appear; it 
grows, but to what we know not. It doth not ap- 
pear. Years later limbs appear, leaves, blossoms, 
and yet it doesn't appear ; the apples take form ; now 
we begin to see what is in the seed, and had we 
been familiar with the apple-seed we might have an- 
ticipated an apple and having knowledge of the ap- 
ple tree we might have been able to have guarded 
it more thoroughly. So with the little globe I hold 
in my hand. We are tempted to break it, but we 
hear something pecking from within and a bird is 
hatched, but it doesn't appear what kind of a bird 
it is. It grows, it has the appearance of a dozen dif- 
ferent kinds. We don't know whether it is an eagle 
or an owl; we must wait; it does not yet appear. 
On entering the art gallery, we see the artist at work 
upon the canvas. He spends half a day and it 
doesn't yet appear what he is going to do. I must 
have his ideal. Even then, after ye have knowl- 
edge of the seed, shell, ideal or child, no one can tell 
what the harvest is to be. There are enemies and 
perverting influences, such as we are not able to ap- 
preciate, measure, or even anticipate; hence it is 
impossible for us at all times, under all circum- 
stances, to guard and protect the developing inter- 
ests of the harvests and oft-times the most promis- 
ing is utterly destroyed. The boy may grow, learn 



SONSHIP. 



113 



and act, but soon his movements are checkmated, so 
that that which he would do, he does not. He 
struggles, breaks away, falls and rises alternately, 
until it becomes problematical where is he going, or 
what is he to be? "It doth not yet appear." 

But some things are made to appear by having 
knowledge of the seed, egg, animal and being. When 
we know the seed to be apple, peach or orange, we 
have reason to expect apples, peaches or oranges. 
If we knew that the egg is that of a robin, sparrow 
or eagle, we should know what to look for. If the 
young animal is a monkey, pup, colt, or child then 
we look for the traits of the monkey, dog, horse, or 
man to appear in the development until the perfec- 
tion of that animal is disclosed. Behold, now are 
we the Sons of God, what then must appear? Traits, 
aspirations and elements of the nature of God. We 
naturally look for a development of mind, the cul- 
turing of spirit, with capacity for suffering and en- 
joying, knowing and doing, regretting and glorying„ 
And yet we cannot anticipate God, for he is going on 
and up through the natural to the supernatural and 
adding constantly to the field of revelation. There 
are hidden forces and agencies in the future that we 
are not in any position to appreciate. Nor can we 
tell what these intensified forces will do for us. By 
what method of thought could our fathers have an- 
ticipated a journey from Chicago to New York in 
eighteen hours ; they talked about horses and train- 
ed them ; occasionally found one that would go ten 



H4 



Victory Assured. 



miles in an hour, but not for many hours ; they talk- 
ed about the canoe, the boat and the schooner of 
different models, of sails, and of how to utilize the 
gales and the tides, but they knew nothing of steam 
or electricity and had no standards by which to tell 
what either would do for them. They could not tell, 
it did not appear what the 20th century would bring 
to the race. They had no standard by which they 
could measure the life we now live, no more than 
we have to measure growth, culture and refine- 
ment in heaven, where all contaminating forces, fric- 
tion and sin is forever excluded. 

What is Cuba to be? We have knowledge of the 
formation, soil and people, but what is to be the 
staple of thought, religious conviction ? What are 
they to learn first? We have no knowledge of God's 
ability to adjust appliances and helps to our future 
condition. We are morally certain we have the best 
aids and gifts God can devise at present and that 
he who withheld not His only begotten Son will see 
to it that His children have the best helps infinite 
wisdom can provide ; but as children we are not al- 
ways in position to see this, but the fact remains, 
"that all things work together for good to them that 
love God." Paul summed up the grand possibili- 
ties in man when he wrote in the epistle to the Ro- 
mans, "He that spared not his own Son but deliver- 
ed Him up for us all how shall He not with Him 
also freely give us all things ?" 

Again : The glory can never appear until the 



SONSHIP. 



115 



pattern appears. We shall never be just like Him 
until we see Him. Hence the one work of the 
church everywhere is to reveal, set forth or repro- 
duce the life and spirit of Jesus in the flesh. 

Ten thousand are living in an unconverted, disin- 
terested state, because they have never seen what 
to them was the Jesus whom they seek. This is not 
strange. Factors and men linger in the pathway 
of men undisturbed and unemployed because we 
know not of their nature and power. Take as an il- 
lustration electricity with its subtle forces. It was 
a matter of discourse three hundred years before 
Christ, and yet no one dreamed of its power until 
centuries had multiplied and one Morse lifted into 
position for a practical display of its power to send 
thought by fire. Now cars fly like birds through our 
streets, night puts away its dark robes and distance 
disappears. So with men. In 1861 Governor Yates, 
of Illinois, said to Mr. Washburn : "Where can we 
find a man who knows how to organize our men 
into regiments for Avar?" "Why not call Grant, of 
Galena?" "Who is he? I have never heard of him." 
Thus twenty years before U. S. Grant held the world 
in his grasp and all nations delighted to honor him, 
he was unknown to the Governor of his own State. 
He had never been seen. This is emphatically true 
of Jesus, the Saviour of men. Men, women and chil- 
dren are waiting to see Him in the house, store, field, 
school and streets. To see His patience, long-suf- 
fering, gentleness, meekness, humility, love and 



n6 



Victory Assured. 



ministry. He must be seen in authority and power. 
Authority does not always carry with it power, and 
it is power we need in order to win souls for Christ 
— a peculiar power. When Governor Yates com- 
missioned Grant as Colonel of the 76th Illinois., I 
have no doubt he was as ready to down the rebel- 
lion as when he received Lee's sword at Appomattox 
but he was not in position and had he been commis- 
sioned as commander-in-chief he would not have 
had power. The people would have watched him 
with a jealous eye, but when he fought at Donnelson 
and won, at Pittsburg and gained a victory, at Shi- 
loh, and triumphed in the wilderness and conquered 
before Richmond, the people came to see that he 
was the man, and had the war continued, we should 
have been going South one hundred thousand strong 
to-day. We had come to believe in Grant as a con- 
queror. That was his power. So when Jesus stood 
in the senate chamber of eternity He was willing to 
save the race, and in a sense He had the power, for 
He was the Son of God,, but it became Him in bring- 
ing many sons to glory to be made perfect through 
suffering. He must climb the miraculous ladder 
from Bethlehem to Bethany in order that the people 
might see His power. He multiplied bread and then 
said "they shall hunger no more." He walked on 
the sea and then said ''there shall be no more sea. M 
He broke the seal of death and then said. "He that 
believeth in me shall never die." He laid down in 
death that He might say. "I am He that was dead, 



SONSHIP. 



117 



but behold I am alive forevermore. I have opened 
a door and no man shall shut it." Because of this 
men believe in Him and His words live with po- 
tency. He established confidence in himself or ruin 
would have been inevitable. He must appear in sac- 
rificial robes before men can believe in God unto sal- 
vation — on this rests the eternal purity and safety 
of heaven. In this mortal, thoughtful men find rest. 
He bore our stripes. 

The necessity of this may be seen when we con- 
sider the strength of a kingdom, w T hich is in the con- 
fidence of the subjects. For instance, Persia once 
enjoyed the best form of government on earth and 
had it been executed righteously, that kingdom 
would have prospered, but when demogogues under- 
took to put away their superiors and caused an act 
to be passed- that no man should pray save to their 
king, they collided with a higher law, even that of 
the individual liberty of conscience. The penalty was 
death at the hands of the lions kept for that pur- 
pose. When the king found that he had signed the 
death warrant of his best man, he would have re- 
versed the decision, but that would have unsettled 
the confidence of the whole kingdom, for if that de- 
cree be not carried out what reason had they to 
think any other would be ? So when the king saw 
there was no way to maintain the confidence of the 
kingdom and save Daniel, he caused him to be 
thrown into the den of lions, but Daniel was larger 
than the lions. He stayed with them all night with- 



nS 



Victory Assured. 



out hurting a lion, without loosening a tooth, for 
they were not at fault, they were the executors of 
the law. He left them for the next violator of law, 
who had no righteousness to plead. Thus Daniel 
filled the law full, and the kingdom was saved, con- 
fidence maintained and all honored. When the dema- 
gogues found that the lions had not injured Daniel 
they declared : "The lions must have been tampered 
with. The king said : "We will test it," and throw- 
ing into the den his accusers they were craunched 
before their bodies reached the bottom of the pit. 
So when the law was written over the archway of 
heaven, "the soul that sinneth it shall die," every 
intelligence in the universe demanded that that law 
be filled full, and Jesus came forth, laid down in 
death suffered it to do its utmost, but did not hurt 
it, nor did death hurt him, for he arose chaining 
death, hell and the grave to his chariot wheel to as- 
cend on high, and the law was filled full to the letter 
and all who go into death in Christ will find only a 
shadow; but he who goes in without him will find 
death as awful, its sting as terrible as it ever was. 
"Put ye on therefore the Lord Jesus Christ." "O 
death, where is thy sting, O grave, where is Thy vic- 
tory? The sting of death is sin and the strength 
of sin is the law, but thanks be unto God who giveth 
us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ." 

Again : We shall never glory in the resurrection 
until Christ appears in His glorified robes. Don't 
talk to me of the resurrection in the absence of that 



SOXSHIP. 



II 9 



glorification which is to take out the wrinkles, re- 
move the bands and burnish the old form so that 
it shall possess all that the architect designed it to 
have. When Christ shall appear we shall see Him as 
Peter, James and John saw Him on the mount of 
transfiguration. That is what Paul meant when 
he wrote : "We shall not all sleep, but we shall all 
be changed in a moment in the twinkling of an eye," 
changed into the glorious form and beauty of His 
most glorious body. Not until then will death be 
swallowed up in victory. Then, when all that we 
lost in Adam, every band, limitation and chain is 
removed, then shall mortals be satisfied, for they 
shall awake in His likeness. 

What do we mean by seeing God ? It is being 
transformed by His spirit who taketh of the things of 
God and revealeth them unto us until we see the 
nature of God. The artist sees in the pictures what 
the amateur never sees. The experienced sculptor 
sees in the stone that which the inexperienced eye 
would never discern. The experiences of the past 
are sufficient to convince any unprejudiced mind 
that God will exhaust every resource known in heav- 
en or on earth before one of His children shall fall 
short of the pattern adopted or appear before the 
throne ill-fitted for Heaven's best places. It is for 
His glory that His children shall see Him and be- 
come like Him, and only such can see Him as are 
like Him, and only such can be like Him as do see 
Him, hence the force of the Apostle's language, 



120 



Victory Assured. 



changed from glory to glory by the spirit while be- 
holding Him as in a glass. He has joyously re- 
warded every effort in this line even to the gift of 
a cup of cold water. I have read with delight and. 
comfort of the tall angels sent out to guard the foot- 
steps of Pilate's wife as she wandered over the high 
mountains of Switzerland in banishment thus re- 
warded for the words she spake on the night of 
Jesus' betrayal in Jerusalem, and in this I note the 
tenderness with which God seeks every opportunity 
to reward every act of those who seek to know 
Jesus or every good intention on the part of His 
children. 

Man's haste forbids the appearance of that work 
which fullness of time will bring about. God never 
gets in a hurry ; He has all eternity in which to ac- 
complish His plans. Hence a thousand years are as 
one day when it is passed, or as a watch in the 
night. When you think of His taking eighty years 
to equip a man for forty years' work, and suffering 
a nation to linger in the crucible for seventy years 
while He created a man with sufficient nerve and con- 
viction to pen the Emancipation Bill, and kept na- 
tions at war for four thousand years while the an- 
gels laid the tracks and prepared the way for the. 
King of Peace, we are amazed at the long delay, and 
at first wonder why this could not have been brought 
about sooner; but when the work is in hasad and 
we note the work for which they were prepared and- 
the necessary elements and conditions brought into 



SONSHIP. 



121 



the history, we are ready to say it was in the full- 
ness of time, in every case, and confidently look for 
God to give all the time necessary for the fullest 
and most perfect revelation possible to the individual 
member. He has given the lily all needed time for 
a perfect display of its glory. Ten thousand years 
could not add one iota to the perfection of the lily ; 
so with the forest, with beasts and birds. There 
were oxen and horses in the days of our fathers as 
perfect as they can ever be ; they have had ample 
time for their perfection. He directs and overrules 
in view of perfection in these matters. He speaks 
to the birds of the forest and when the forests be- 
come leafless, they wing their way to southern 
groves, and in the sunshine of that land become per- 
fect in song and plumage. Now he hath created a 
desire in the human heart that is voiced in the old 
hymn : 

"There is a land of pure delight, 

Where saints immortal reign; 
Infinite day excludes the night 

And pleasures banish pain." 

And that desire will have all needed time for its 
accomplishment and realization. This is one of the 
strongest collateral evidences of man's immortality. 
It is clear to every man who has given this subject 
any thought that no one has ever yet lived long 
enough in this world to become perfect according 
to the standard set forth in God's revealed purpose. 
Take an express train and travel a mile a minute 



122 Victory Assured. 

over lines where there are no strikes for twenty mil- 
lion centuries, and you will still be within the circle 
of man's discovery. And this circle is stored with 
unexplored interests, waiting for some man to have 
time enough to examine carefully and microscopi- 
cally all the interests therein. More, these inter- 
ests are like star-dust, out of which systems of un- 
changing beauty may be formulated. It is true, "the 
heavens declare the glory of God/' but man, who is 
to be like Him, desires to see the glory of God 
and can never be content with beholding 
the glory of the heavens. The standard is set 
very high. Most of us would be delighted to be like 
Moses or Miriam, Daniel or Hannah, Isaiah or Jere- 
miah ; Peter, James or John, Mary or Salome, Paul 
or Barnabas, yet none of these are held up as our 
pattern, nay, the pledge is that we are to be like 
God. 

Poor, fault-finding skeptics, starving to death on 
the faults of Christians and criticizing the imper- 
fections of men, wait until God says: "I'm done,. 
I'm well pleased." Then look on the old saint in 
the light of the throne, bannered and burnished for 
the Courts of the Redeemed. Wait till we outgrow 
the environments and discords and warped condi- 
tions with inherited weaknesses and false lights. 
Wait until God takes His child through the higher 
courses, and spends a few centuries where chips 
never fall, and discipline gives place to inspiration^ 
then look while He takes out regiment after regi- 



SOXSHIP. 



123 



tnent and forms brigades, divisions and armies on 
the sea of glass. Wait till God puts on parade that 
which now appears in the first-fruits of the Resur- 
rection, these the armies of the living God with 
palms of victory and the Sons of Grace will march 
to music that has been perfected in melody and har- 
mony., for then shall we be like Him when we see 
Him as He is. 

This is the crowning glory put upon creative 
wisdom. John was permitted to lean on the bosom 
of Jesus until the perfected revelation of divine 
glory was made known through the transfiguration 
in the Mount. Later in life he wrote : "That which 
we have seen declare we unto you that your joy may 
be full." Xow wherein is our joy made full, in this, 
"If we walk in the light as he is in the light, we have 
fellowship one with another/' that is "fellowship 
with God and the blood of His Son cleanseth us 
from all sin." 

Other works of creation are beautiful and gifted., 
but none share the honor of heirship or possess the 
nature of that hope which works purification until 
the person becomes as pure as is God. The grass 
of the field is beautiful. It is a garment of beauty 
for the eye and speaks the glory of God. The lily 
is clothed in garments more glorious than the robes 
of Solomon, and yet it has no struggle, toil, fore- 
thought or anxiety. The rose is full of speech, its 
sweetness is thrown upon the desert air. The eagle 
manifests strength and majesty, and soars away 



124 



Victory Assured. 



with a sublimity that is perfectly grand, and yet no 
one ever thinks of associating it with family rela- 
tions as adoptable. The ox is handsome, the lion is 
majestic, and yet the distance from the grandest 
king of the forest up to the most helpless infant of 
the age is immeasurable. 

No one ever thought of adopting into the hu- 
man family a beast or a bird. They are not suscept- 
ible of being adopted, but man possesses the possi- 
bility and nature of adoption into the family of Diety 
and may even while I speak this hour, be touched by 
the fire of the Holy Ghost and regenerated and 
made to conform to the life, power, majesty and 
glory of the Infinite, because he was created in that 
image and as the coin, worn and defaced, may be 
reminted, so the soul, sin-blighted, sin-cursed and 
sin-destroyed, may be regenerated by the Holy 
Ghost into the image of the Eternal King by look- 
ing unto Him who is the author and finisher of our 
faith, until we are changed from glory to glory. 



VIII 



SATAN'S ADMISSION AND MISTAKE. 

''Then Satan answered the Lord and said, Doth Job 
fear God for nought? Hast not thou made an hedge 
about him, and about his house, and about all that he 
hath on every side? Thou hast blessed the work of his 
hands, and his substance is increased in the land. — Job 
i: 9-12. 

These are the words of the devil and therefore 
they are not the words of inspiration. I do not 
know that he was ever inspired to say or do any- 
thing. He has said and done some things worthy 
of retention and those selected to collate and bring 
forth the book were inspired to embody those words 
in this ancient and beautiful poem. Satan's position 
and activity put him in possession of some things 
men and angels know nothing about — things that 
enabled him to be very successful in his pursuits. 

Again, he speaks from the standpoint of an 
enemy, and next to a genuine friend is an out- 
spoken enemy. A friend may so flatter as to cause 
you to think you are the only perfect man, while, 
in fact, you are the weakest; weak enough to be 
flattered. Elijah lost his head and heart so fully 
as to think he was the only man left uncaptured by 
Satan. He wanted to die that he might get with 

125 



126 



Victory Assured. 



holy men. when there were thousands who had never 
bent the knee before idols. Treasure what your 
enemy says. He may set forth things that are true, 
but which no other ever told for fear of losing your 
friendship or grieving you. 

Who was this man Job? Of his kinsmen and 
neighbors we know very little. They never came 
near enough to God to be known. He had one 
wife ; he may have had more, but one appeared, 
spoke foolishly and disappeared. It would have 
been better for her reputation if she had never been 
known. He had ten children who gave him great 
anxiety, and were all swept away in a cyclone. His 
neighbors seem to have been of the different schools 
of philosophy and to have said many wise things, 
but untimely and inappropriately. But of Job vol- 
umes have been and are still to be written. He was 
a man of great wealth, a political leader of his day 
and honored among men. He was taken into com- 
panionship, communion and fellowship with God ; 
was told of God's purpose in establishing springs 
for artesian flowing: the design of the bands of 
Orion, moved with the Father amid the sweet in- 
fluences of the Pleiades. He was scholarly enough 
to accompany his Maker through the morning hours 
of time. My soul stands in awe as I read the facts 
set forth in the thirty-eighth chapter. God seemed 
to delight in introducing his son Job on occasions 
as the one perfect man who feared Him and 
eschewed evil. One day when the Sons of God 



Satan's Admission and Mistake:. 



127 



came together, Satan appeared. God called his at- 
tention to the perfection of his son Job : Have 
you ever noticed that there are none like him in all 
the earth, a perfect servant. I have often wondered 
if God had any feeling of delight or gratification in 
presenting His child as fitted for all positions and 
criticisms. I have read and reread of the return of 
George Washington after he had led the heroic army 
out of winter quarters at Valley Forge and forced 
Lord Cornwallis to surrender and go home, for 
America had taken her place among the nations of 
the earth. Philadelphia threw open her windows, 
door and streets to welcome the conqueror. Illumin- 
ations, decorations and music were without stint. 
Men and women wept for joy and shouted over their 
victories, but down yonder in the quiet Mt. V ernon 
home sat the mother of the hero, who when asked if 
she had heard the particulars said : "No, but I shall 
know soon, for George will come to me first" — and 
so he did. Leaning over her tenderly, and kissing 
her cheek, the hero said : "Your letters and prayers 
have been my constant inspiration. That fond 
mother replied: "Son, I knew I could trust you." 
So our Heavenly Father looked on Job in every suc- 
ceeding conflict, while philosophers theorized, and 
Satan tempted and his wife begged him to curse 
God and die. He knew he could trust him. Xo 
matter what forces or temptations were applied, 
God knew His son and was not anxious. "He is a 
perfect man and, Satan, you know it. He eschew- 



128 



Victory Assured. 



eth evil and feareth God." All of this Satan admits 
without a single word of objection. Yes, that is so. 
He is a perfect man. Perfect in what — as a busi- 
ness man ? No ; not one word is said about his 
great wealth. As a politician ? No ; although his 
sagacity was readily acknowledged among men. Ah, 
no ; God knew that Job had riches immeasurable, 
and that wisdom which cometh down from above ; 
gold tried in the fire until the dross had all been 
consumed. I have been lifted from out the valley 
of humiliation into the peaks of the mountains, 
swept by the breezes of heaven, laden with the blos- 
soms of the vineyard now growing on the banks of 
the river of life, and longed for one touch of the 
heart of my Father, but God designed that we 
should weave all the good things of this world into 
a character to be burnished and bannered for glory. 
That can never be accomplished until the fires are 
kindled, for it is affliction that worketh out for us a 
far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory. In 
the crucible we are to be changed from glory to 
glory. 

In what was Job perfect ? Character for service. 
Job is a perfect servant — not a perfect man. You 
will never see a perfect man in this world, for that 
implies perfect wisdom and all knowledge. Service 
requires perfect obedience and perfect love. It does 
not require much talent to obey and love perfectly. 
Job was perfect in that he feared God and eschewed 
evil. Now in all the Book you will find this rule 



Satan's Admission and Mistake. 



129 



holds good. When God first began His inspection 
of men, He called upon Abraham and said to him : 
"It is time you stopped your meandering and began 
to walk before Me perfectly." When Jesus closed 
His great sermon on the mountain He said to His 
disciples : "What do ye more than others if you 
love those only who love you? What evidence is 
that that you are of God? The perfection of your 
Father is in that He loves His enemies, even so 
love ye. Be ye therefore perfect, even as your 
Father in heaven is perfect." Just here poor hu- 
manity limps and questions the possibility of such a 
life or condition while passing through this world 
of sin. To the more thoughtful and confident the 
question of possibility is settled in the requirement, 
and in the fact that God has prepared and set forth 
a perfect system of life in Christ Jesus, and under- 
taken a perfect application of that system at the 
hand of the Holy Ghost. What, then, remains tQ 
secure perfect results ? Perfect material and perfect 
surrender to God's plan and purpose. Thank God, 
our Father never requires at our hand more than we 
can render. He does require perfection in our serv- 
ice. Every writer has so declared. Peter set be- 
fore the world the claim for a whole and perfect 
service. Paul prayed for the sanctification of the 
Church at Thessalonica, and then added, "Faithful 
is he who hath called you, who also will do it." Can 
we doubt? Satan did not question it for one minute. 
He admitted it was possible for a man to walk up- 



130 



Victory Assured. 



rightly. That question over which the Church is 
still quibbling was settled three thousand years ago 
in heaven and hell, and so announced by the Father 
and admitted by his Satanic majesty. Men can live 
and serve God perfectly in this sin-cursed world. 

Further, let me say the world demands that 
Christians should live right in this world. 
The world demands that God's people present 
a life of peace and contentment. God has 
said He will keep him in perfect peace whose mind 
is stayed on Him. The surface life may not be a 
representation of peace, because the fires that refine 
bring the dross to the surface and allow the gold 
and silver to fall. The Christian in this world is in 
a state of trial and discipline. He is being tested. 
But while the sea is lashed into great billows and 
angry foam, there is a point not very far down, 
where there is neither ripple nor motion ; so with 
the Christian there may be ripples on the surface, 
but if our hearts are fully consecrated there will be 
an inward peace as serene as the ocean's depths, 
where the influence of the wild winds and waves 
never come. Do not allow appearances to deceive 
you. Wait until the dross is all removed and the 
pure gold is wrought into the image of the purifier, 
for we shall never see God until the perfect work is 
wrought in us. Amiability may admit us to society, 
education and accomplishments may admit to the 
cultured circles, wealth may give a man position, 
profession admit them to the church ; but possession 



Satan's Admission and Mistake. 131 

alone admits to the Holy of Holies. Argument may 
be overthrown, persuasion resisted, appeal scorned, 
but holiness is truth embodied. Such will send forth 
like the spring on the mountain-side a perpetual 
source of refreshment and blessing all around, mani- 
festing itself in gentleness, love, kindly deeds, help- 
ful acts. May God help us to rise to the privilege 
of full consecration that we may enter into that ex- 
perience which is abiding. 

Hast thou considered my servant Job ? He is 
unlike all other men. There is none like him in all 
the world. What ! Were there no other men who 
feared God? Oh, yes ; the sons of God were there, 
but Job had advanced and received another work in 
him unlike all others. "Oh, I do not believe in any 
second work of grace ! God does not do His work 
imperfectly. He does a perfect work every time." 
Yes ; I believe that when a man is born into God's 
kingdom or family it is a perfect birth, conversion 
or regeneration, although the child may be a very 
weak offspring because of weaknesses inherited and 
environments suffered. He may give the family 
great trouble, but the birth is perfect and the life 
is perfect. What will the possessor do with that 
new possession ? Will he consecrate it perfectly to 
God? Certainly that would be a reasonable thing 
to do. But have you all done that? If so, you will 
get a new experience by being perfectly sanctified at 
the hand of God. God cannot sanctify a sinful life ; 
"but know that the Lord hath set apart him that is 



132 



Victory Assured. 



godly for himself." We must first be born into 
His kingdom. The sinner's cry is for pardon when 
conviction settles down into his soul. When par- 
don comes and condemnation is removed his shout 
is that of joy for sins forgiven, condemnation re- 
moved. He sings 

"My God is reconciled; 

His pardoning voice I hear; 
He owns me for his child; 

I can no longer fear; 
With confidence I now draw nigh, 
And, "Father, Abba, Father," cry. 

Now, that man is not sanctified ; nor is it possible 
for him to be until he consecrates that new life to 
the service of his newly-found Father. God would 
never call the attention of devils, men or angels to 
him as having that which none other have. Xo, he 
is no more perfect than Jesus was when He first ap- 
peared in the theophanes of military power before 
the gate of that ancient city to direct Joshua, or in 
His friendliness to Abraham. Even Christ himself 
must be made perfect through suffering, and God 
can never be satisfied with His children until they 
are made perfect, "for whom He called He predes- 
tinated that they should be conformed to the image 
of His son.'' All of which Satan admitted. If it 
behooved Jesus to be made perfect through suffer- 
ing, how can we expect to be like Him without suf- 
fering with Him. Our Father loves us too much to 
permit us to go through this world without dis- 



Satan's Admission and Mistake. 133 

cipline and suffering. He purposes that every form 
and order of intelligences should know of His power 
to save under the most trying and diabolical condi- 
tions. Thank God, for showing the worlds, hell, 
earth and heaven one man who could be holy in a 
w 7 hirlwind of disaster and a cyclone of destruction. 
I am glad to be numbered among those who believe 
in a system that has produced one man like Job. 
Satan was forced to believe all that was claimed for 
Job by his Father. Job did not thrust himself into 
notice, nor w T as he called forth by his friends. God 
said, "Have you considered my servant Job ?" 

Here the devil made his great mistake by think- 
ing he personally could destroy one of God's per- 
fected men or children. "Hadst thou not hedged 
him about and shut him in, prospered and enriched 
him, he would have stumbled on the dark mountains 
as others do. It is not from principle that Job serves 
thee, but for the spoils/' It is true that God's ser- 
vants are hedged about more perfectly than any 
other. He has the means and armies at His com- 
mand ; so that there are no surprises, no delays, no 
mistakes. Again, He can enrich them more rapidly 
and to a greater extent than any other. It is as 
easy for God to throw one hundred bushels of wheat 
to the acre as ten or twenty, for His resources are 
inexhaustible. Satan knew full well that God was 
doing a business that warranted surer and larger 
dividends than he could afford to promise. Satan 
is often reckless in his promises and has many things 



134 



Victory Assured. 



to offer, for I do not believe, as some of my breth- 
ren do, that Satan has nothing to give. He has 
certainly the controlling interest in many new homes 
and cities, and is running to-day the greatest mo- 
nopoly of this country, and very few question his 
right. But he is dealing with a merchandise that is 
perishable. God deals with the imperishable, and by 
the enforcement of such principle as must result 
in wealth, for all God's people must be industrious, 
prudent, acquisitive and persevering. Hence the 
strength of Satan's criticism. God had so thor- 
oughly hedged Job about as to forbid Satan's ap- 
proach. He had so enriched him as to remove the 
strength of temptation, and this, my brethren, He 
will do for any of us. Has He not said, "I will go 
with thee and give thee rest from all thine enemies, 
and thou and thy children shall dwell in safety in the 
land whither thou goest." Did not Isaiah see "the 
Mighty to save," coming from Edom, with dyed 
garments from Bozrah, traveling in the greatness 
of His strength, and rejoice. Has not the Psalmist 
written, "He shall surely deliver thee from the snare 
of the fowler and from the noisome pestilence. He 
shall cover thee with His feathers and under His 
wing shalt thou trust. Thou shalt not be afraid of 
the terror by night nor of the arrow that flieth by 
day, nor for the pestilence that walketh in dark- 
ness; nor for the destruction at noonday; a thou- 
sand shall fall by thy side and ten thousand at 
thy right hand ; but it shall not come nigh thee ; only 



Satan's Admission and Mistake. 13S 



with thine eye shalt thou behold and see the reward 
of the wicked., Because thou hast made the Lord 
thy refuge, even the Most High thy habitation : 
there shall be no evil befall thee, neither shall any 
plague come nigh thy dwelling." Was not Satan 
right? Did not Elisha find the mountains round 
about Dothan filled with horsemen and chariots and 
say "they that be for us are more than all they that 
can be against us?" Surely, "our God doth know 
how to deliver His people out of all their tempta- 
tions and reserve the remainder for judgment." But 
these things do not come as a reward, but as a re- 
sult. Christians do not serve God for the spoils, not 
for what we are to get, but what we are to be. 
Hence, men of God count it all joy when they fall 
into temptation, knowing that temptation worketh 
patience, and patience when it is perfected faith 
not for Job's sake, nor the Father's gratification, 
but for the good of the race, 

God sufifered Satan to mount the chariot of wind 
and harness the steeds of fire and ride forth in his 
work of desolation until poor Job was homeless, 
penniless and childless — but still sinless. We read 
that through his tears he cries, "The Lord gave, the 
Lord hath taken away ; blessed be the name of the 
Lord." "In all this Job sinned not nor charged God 
foolishly." Then Satan said, "All that a man hath 
will he give for his life ; put forth Thine hand and 
touch his flesh and he will curse Thee to Thy face." 
And the Lord said, "Behold, he is in thy hand," and 



136 



Victory Assured. 



Satan diseased and tormented the poor man until he 
became loathsome and his friends wished that he 
might die. Even the wife of his bosom urged him 
to curse God and die. But listen, up from the 
parched lips, from beneath the matted hair, comes 
the sublimest sentiment of the ages : "Though He 
slay me, yet will I trust Him." Not in view of the 
spoils, they are all gone, but faith cried out of the 
darkness and up from the ash-bed : "Move on ; fare- 
well, friends ; leave me in the ashes until the fires 
go out, if there I may learn of the higher law of 
life." Love only can beget that perfect loyalty 
which in darkest hours can trust God and move on. 
I am not sure Job knew what was going on, but 
God did, and Job dared trust. The cricket on the 
hillside cannot enjoy and may not understand the 
thundering of the hoofs and the crunching of the 
plowshare that sends His chariot rolling and tumb- 
ling over the hillside, even to the meadow's edge; 
but the plowman does, for he is preparing for a great 
harvest. So our God had a sublime reason in His 
mind when He surrendered Job to the touch of 
Satan. Yea, He wanted a man on whom generations 
might look, one in whom grace, having had a fair 
chance, was more than a match for Satan and all 
his agencies. 

How do we obtain this grace? By living and 
acting in the line of duty. Lord Craven was living 
in London during a serious epidemic and became 
very much alarmed. To avoid all danger he re- 



Satan's Admission and Mistake. 



137 



solved to go to his country seat. His coach and six 
were accordingly at the door, his baggage placed 
and all things in readiness for his journey. As he 
was walking through his hall, with hat on, cane 
under his arm and putting on his gloves ready to 
step into his carriage, he overheard his negro who 
served him as postillion, say to another servant, "I 
suppose by my Lord's quitting London to avoid 
the plague that his God lives in the country and not 
in the town." The poor negro said this in the sim- 
plicity of his heart, as he himself believed in a plu- 
rality of gods. The speech, however, struck Lord 
Craven very sensibly and made him pause. "My 
God," thought he, "lives everywhere and can pre- 
serve me in town as well as in the country. I will 
stay where I am. The ignorance of that negro has 
just now preached me a very useful sermon. Lord, 
pardon this unbelief and that distrust of Thy provi- 
dence, which made me think of running away from 
Thy hand.'' He immediately ordered the horses to 
be taken from the coach and the baggage to be 
taken in. He remained in London, was remarkably 
useful among his sick neighbors and never became 
a victim of the disease. "The path of duty is the 
only path of safety." But the Scriptures teach more 
than a hedge, for it proffers protection in all our 
journeying. "The steps of a good man are ordered 
of the Lord.'' An English tradesman having al- 
ways a large sum of money on his person left Bris- 
tol en route for London, but was taken ill and com- 



138 



Victory Assured. 



pelled to abandon the trip. Years afterwards a 
criminal about to be hung said to him : "Do you re- 
member starting for London and having to stop be- 
cause of illness?" "Perfectly well, sir." "It is well 
for you that you did not go. I, with others, know- 
ing of your intention and possessions, had planned 
to murder you and take the money." Thus God 
interposes and saves His people. In 1743 John 
Wesley was dragged by a mob of the town and 
savagely beaten. ''Knock him down ; kill him ; cru- 
cify him !" shouted the mob. After a time he began 
to pray aloud and the leader of the mob, a beer- 
garden prize fighter, was so affected by his prayer 
that he immediately took his part and led him to his 
lodgings. Soon after John and Charles Wesley re- 
turned to Warsau and took this man into the society. 
Charles asked him what he thought of his brother 
John. "Think of him," said the converted prize 
fighter, "I knew when so many of us could not kill 
one man that God must be with him." 

Our Father delights in the perfection of His 
children. When Greece wanted a statue she sum- 
moned her chief artist. He called together all the 
most beautiful models of the kingdom. The per- 
fect features of each were transferred to the marble, 
thus giving to the world the most beautiful form 
ever seen or of which poets had dreamed. It is 
said of Michael Angelo that when finishing his mas- 
terpiece a brother artist called on him and found 
him finishing a statue. He admired it. wondered at 



Satan's Admission and Mistake. 



139 



the skill of the sculptor. He had occasion to call on 
him again some six months later and found him at 
work upon the same piece. "What," said the 
stranger, "are you still at work on that statue?" 
"Yes ; I have retouched that and polished this in 
order that I might soften the expression and 
strengthen that muscle." "These are mere trifles," 
said the stranger. "Yes ; but trifles make perfec- 
tion and perfection is no trifle," said the great sculp- 
tor. When the statue was finished the work be- 
came the admiration of all Greece ; yea, for a time, 
all the world. So God hath sought to make pro- 
vision for the perfection of His children and lifted 
before the world at different times works of per- 
fection ; but if you would reach the highest model 
of perfect life keep before the mind the perfect 
Jesus, the Son of God, who, being the brightness of 
His glory and the express image of His person and 
upholding all things by the word of His power, when 
He had by Himself purged our sins, sat down on the 
right hand of the majesty on high. Fix this picture 
in the mind and keep singing : 

Oh, for a heart to praise my God, 

A heart from sin set free; 
A heart that always feels thy blood 

So freely spilt for me. 

A heart in every thought renewed; 

And full of love divine; 
Perfect, and right, and pure, and good, 

A copy, Lord, of thine. 



140 



Victory Assured. 



We must not forget that it's the little things of life 
that help to round out the perfect character which 
is to be presented without spot or wrinkle with great 
joy. 



IX 



DISPOSING OF ANNOYANCES. 

''And when the fowls came upon the carcasses 
Abram drove them away." — Gen. 15: 11. 

There are a great many valuable lessons gath- 
ered into little nuggets, fossils and sentences, many 
of which go undisturbed for ages then are caught 
up, opened and made to appear in new robes, with 
new gifts. The event recorded by the words of my 
text appears from out the distance, across the sea 
of Time, among a cluster of names and deeds so 
insignificant as not to interest the casual reader, he 
passes by the whole story ; yet it contains some of 
the best suggestions of Old Testament record. It is 
a note from the fort of universal worship. An old 
Greek historian once said : "In all my travels and 
reading, I have never found a people without priests, 
altars and places of worship. I have found them 
without property or dwellings, literature or art, or 
even a knowledge of history ; but even then they 
had some system of worship. So we find in this 
record a form of worship. Abram, who had re- 
ceived many favors at the hand of God, sought an 
interview that he might give thanks for all kind- 
nesses, and on being told if he would build an altar 

141 



142 



Victory Assured. 



and select birds and beasts and a place on which to 
offer them, God would meet him. He did as he was 
told and then sat down to watch his offering lest it 
be polluted by the carniverous birds. In this we 
note our Father's interest in the details of worship. 
He would that all men have a place of worship, a 
specific place for the offering of his service, whither 
he may invite, yea, gather the children from the 
storm. This renders every item of service in God's 
house of sufficient importance to command the at- 
tention of all present. Anything worth doing is 
worth doing well, especially where it is of divine 
appointment. We recognize this law in minor de- 
tails. We simply tolerate the business man who has 
no particular place of business or identification with 
any system to which he feels himself answerable. 
Such men are either afraid of their methods, or have 
none. So in all lines of organized work. He who 
sought a place and enlisted in the army because he 
wanted to serve his country was worth a score of 
that class who happened to be in the swim and 
enlisted because others did and were sorry as soon 
as the excitement passed over. Such were always 
a burden to the army when in battle or movement. 

All battles, carnal and spiritual, should be fought 
in that spirit. The Prince of all Conquerors said : 
"To him that overcometh I will grant to sit with Me 
in my throne, even as I have overcome and am sat 
down with my Father at His throne/'' This gives 
all acts and deeds value and significance. The 



Disposing of Axxoyaxces. 



143 



offering of two mites was equal to the best because 
it was the widow's best. She knew, and God knew, 
and each knew that the other knew. The small be- 
comes large by this law. In an English dockyard a 
great ship was to be launched. An immense multi- 
tude assembled to see it glide down the slides ; the 
blocks and wedges were knocked away, but the great 
hull did not stir and there was disappointment. 
Just then a little boy ran forward and began to push 
the ship with all his might. The crowd broke out 
in a laugh of ridicule. The ship began to move. It 
needed just the pound the boy could push, that's alL 
But it would not have moved without that or its 
equivalent. So in every day parade, review or 
battle ; perfection depends upon the best every man 
can offer. The perfection of the whole can never 
be reached without the perfection of the individual 
members of the company, regiment, brigade, divi- 
sion or corps, hence the importance of caring for 
details. Xo great achievement was ever won by 
men who were careless at this point. Xapoleon fur- 
nishes a striking illustration of this fact. In times 
of greatest excitement, when the world was study- 
ing his plans, he was giving direction and attention 
to the shoeing of his horses and selecting saddles 
and shoes for horses and men. In one of his great- 
est campaigns, at a time when the army was in 
imminent danger, he wrote an under-officer the fol- 
lowing letter: "Your returns are not clear. I do 
not see the position of General Gardanne's division, 



144 



Victory Assured. 



or his force. I do not see companies that belong to 
the army of Naples ; this carelessness will at least 
endanger the army and embarrass its administration 
and destroy its discipline. Send me perfectly accu- 
rate returns. The returns of my armies form the 
most agreeable portion of my library." The same 
is true of Wellington, and our own Sherman and 
Thomas. The correspondence from the army of 
Sherman shows that for months before he made 
the great march from Atlanta to the Sea, he was 
studying the country through which he was to go, 
its resources and supplies, in order that he might 
provide for his men and horses. 

We have an evidence of that irresistible impulse 
to come into the presence of some Supreme Ruler, 
arising perhaps from a sense of fear and curiosity 
to know him who is and is net seen. Surrounded 
by mystery and uncertainties and impressed with the 
fact of an onward march, man longs to know who 
or what it is that controls these irresistible forces 
that play around and through him. But the event 
gives more than an impulse ; it presents a system of 
worship that contains every element of strength and 
fitness yet discovered. The altar is simple in its 
construction; thrown together in the field by the 
implements of an ordinary shepherd, consisting of 
e-arth and rocks, but it is an altar, in keeping with 
the civilization, place and age. It is what that age 
required. Every place of worship ought to be estab- 
lished on that principle ; anything more or less is 



Disposing Or Annoyances. 



MS 



an imperfection, for it detracts rather than helps the 
worshiper. 

Some one has said: "It is easy to see why 
Abram worshiped at the altar with birds and beasts 
for his sacrifice. Location and study governs re- 
ligious development. The Chaldean turned his at- 
tention to the heavens, became a w T orshiper of the 
Sun. Why ? Because the Sun was the greatest and 
most powerful of all the heavenly bodies. This fact 
led him to worship the sun, moon and stars. Out of 
this has grow 7 n that system of astrology that brings 
us our knowledge of astronomy. Turn to Egypt, 
and you find nature w T orship. Somehow the over- 
flowing of the Nile gives yearly a fertilizing energy 
to the soil such as causes it to bring forth abun- 
dantly. Because of these forms in the vegetable 
and animal kingdoms, the Egyptian goes beyond 
the form to the giver of energy and becomes a wor- 
shiper of that mysterious power we call life as it 
appears in forms. He deifies animals and forms that 
to his mind best represent his conception of the first 
Great Cause. India rises a little higher. The 
Hindoo looks on all eminence as coming from some 
great First Cause, whom they call god. Any man 
swinging out on the current from deitific centers 
must return by encountering the current and get- 
ting back to the eminence from which the influence 
started." 

We find in this scene a recognition of that de- 
mand for a mediator which is found everywhere. 



146 



Victory Assured. 



Israel said : "Let not God speak to us lest we die* 

but let Moses speak for him." Job said to his coun- 
sellors "There is no daysman betwixt us who can 
lay his hand on both of us." The experiences and 
theories of ages have not changed that feeling. Men 
everywhere seek some man to speak for them, and 
when a sense of wrong fills the heart of the seeker 
he seeks the best he can find. This appears on every 
page of history, according to the nature of the 
civilization in which they live. We approach with 
boldness the throne of grace. Why? Because we 
have knowledge of an high priest who is touched 
with the feeling of our infirmities. He has tasted 
death for every man, and is therefore our propitia- 
tion, prepared from the foundation of the world 
but waited for the fullness of time that he might be 
manifested in the flesh, waiting for a sufficient 
growth in the conception of God's will, and the tests 
of man's ability to meet the demands of his own 
nature so as to make it possible for him to accom- 
plish the purpose of Deity. Some may ask, why 
might not this simple form of worship have been 
kept up throughout all ages? Simply because God 
designed every form of worship to be elevating and 
educative, hence it is the duty of the worshiper to 
elevate and inspire the people with whom he lives. 
We hear much about the church coming to the peo- 
ple and mingling with the people, but all that talk 
originates with those who do not want to improve — - 



Disposing of Annoyances. 



147 



hence they want a form of worship in keeping with 
their tastes. 

The first object is and should be the erection of 
standards. Every song, sermon or prayer should 
lift the standard and then inspire the seeker to 
reach it. He who can meet the people where they 
live and elevate them in heart and life is meeting 
the demand and accomplishing the design of the 
gospel. There are places in every community where 
God's saints live in luxury, walk on softest tapestries 
and drink their water out of silver and golden cups. 
Xow, if I should go there and they gave me water 
in a rusty, half-worn cup, I should feel insulted, and 
the water would not taste good. On the other hand, 
if I called at a poor man's house, where there were 
none of these luxuries, but all drank from the tin 
cup and slept on a straw mat, and they were to bor- 
row or purchase a silver cup for me, I would feel 
grieved, for I would rather drink with them from 
the old tin cup. It is water that slakes the thirst 
in either case and the means are simply the medium ; 
but that should be natural, not strained. So with 
true worshipers. It is God's grace that saves men 
and means should be employed to bring the needy 
and Saviour together. Hence, he who makes the 
means least objectionable "without sacrifice of prin- 
ciple," to the largest number of people, is most suc- 
cessful in pleasing God. Who first devised the 
scheme to rescue fallen men? The poet sings: 
''Hail sovereign grace that first began 



148 



Victory Assured. 



The scheme to rescue fallen men; 
Hail, matchless, free, eternal grace 
That gives my soul a hiding place." 

Again, we find here the element necessary in all 
true worship. That which is essential to all re- 
ligious duty : obedience. kk He obeyed God." That 
is all God asks to-day. How shall I secure pardon? 
Obey God. How be sanctified? Obey God. How 
grow in grace ? Obey God. No display of art can 
take the place of obedience in any form of worship 
that has the glory of God for its object. Build the 
most magnificent church on earth, bring into it the 
grandest choir, with the most brilliant and eloquent 
orator and pious leader, and unless the people obey, 
the w r orship is a failure. Our children may do many 
things, but nothing is so bad or hurts so much as 
disobedience. But while all this is true, nevertheless 
that primitive form of worship would not be pleasing 
to God to-day. We must have forms of worship 
through which perfect obedience can adjust itself 
to the varied conditions of life in which we live and 
worship. Every student must see that it was per- 
fectly legitimate that the old worship of the He- 
brews should be done away with. It was perfectly 
legitimate that the old Roman system of worship 
should be superseded by the Reformation. The 
cold, dead condition of the church one hundred and 
fifty and two hundred years ago made it perfectly 
proper that that cold, dead system of worship should 
pass away and be superseded by the warm, glowing 



Disposing of Annoyances. 



149 



-spiritual energy of Methodism. It was perfectly 
legitimate. But when we tell you that if your 
[Methodism loses its flexibility, if your [Methodism 
loses its power of adjustment to the everchanging 
conditions of human society, the church does not 
keep step with the growth of human intelligence, 
and the development of human institutions, it will 
become a thing of the past, something else will and 
should take its place. You think that is the strang- 
est, the wildest thing a man can say, and yet noth- 
ing can be more certain than that. If our form is to 
last, it must adjust itself to the ever-varying con- 
ditions of human life. It must have intelligence 
enough to be at the front of human thinking in 
every grand and great movement of the times. It 
must have sympathy enough to take hold of the 
great throbbing heart of humanity and make that 
heart feel its warmth and its heaven-born energy, 
and unless it can touch the two extremes of human 
society, something else, somewhere, will have to 
take its place. So if the people do not go to church 
to-day as they did 100 years ago, if the churches 
are empty, if the pews are vacant, if the masses are 
found elsewhere, do not blame the people, infidelity, 
philosophy or the changed conditions in industrial 
life. There is no one thing to be blamed. The fact 
is, the churches do not furnish the people what they 
need and are looking for. 

But further. We find that annoyances come to 
all worshipers. Be the service ever so sincere, and 



Victory Assured. 



the act in keeping with the strictest form of obedi- 
ence set forth in the text, every one is sure to be 
annoyed. Birds of annoyance come unbidden into 
our houses of worship. The old patriarch was 
pained by the presence of the birds flying down and 
attempting to light on the sacrifice. As to the 
nature of those birds we know but little more than 
what is here stated — they were attracted by the 
blood. They were carniverous in their nature. They 
may not have been in themselves contaminating, but 
annoying. So has it been with worshipers ever since 
Abraham drove the birds away and Job called the 
saints together in the land of Uz. Christians have 
been annoyed by the presence of birds who seek to 
pollute the sacrifice they bring. These birds may 
not be in themselves evil, but distracting and dis- 
turbing; their presence is in itself annoying. The 
hour with God in the closet is often invaded by 
thoughts, plans, promises and duties such as clip 
man's wings and prevent his flight toward God. In 
church you try to forget that you promised to meet 
Jones at ten o'clock Monday morning for a sail or 
ride, but again and again you have gone over the 
scene, anticipating all the pleasures of the occasion. 
Even while the minister was praying or the choir 
was singing, your thought was busy about other 
people's business and matters over which you had 
no control, or in which you had no responsibility. 
Like a swarm of locusts, these distracting thoughts 
shut out God's light, and left you in utter dark- 



Disposing of Annoyances. 



151 



ness. Not in themselves evil, but if cherished, suf- 
fered to remain, they monopolize the hour of wor- 
ship; but it is in the closet, at the prayer-meeting, 
Sunday-school or church service that they will do 
you no good. I have known Christian men who 
were so absorbed in building a new house as to carry 
their plans to church with them, and think of them 
during service. The minute service was over, in- 
stead of seeking out the stranger and making him 
welcome, get some friend, take him aside, and show 
him the plans of the new house. There is no escape ; 
come they will, and unbidden. John, the dwarf, 
used to say he would climb up into the presence of 
the angels and so escape the distraction of thought. 
One day he left all and hurried away into the wil- 
derness beyond the steps of men, and there in 
solemn silence he lingered in hunger and cold, 
but still distracted with thoughts of starvation, he re- 
turned and knocked at the door of his home and 
was asked : "Who is there ?" And when he an- 
swered : "John, your brother," the answer came, 
"No, no ; the younger son John went to live with 
the angels to get away from distracting thoughts/' 
"Ah, it is I, the thoughts followed me and I have 
returned." Like the birds on newly-sown fields, 
evil thoughts come and beset the most active minds. 
Flying over these minds they seek to pervert and 
destroy the best impressions left by God's messen- 
gers, and they often form the strongest battery for 
evil that Satan has. They come with just the shade 



Victory Assured. 



of doubt most plausible to the worshiper, or the 
suggestion which is most misleading. He may have 
just ceased praying when the evil one asks : "Didn't 
I pray well that time. I guess they will think I am 
one of the elect." The Evil One often tells men they 
have prayed, preached or sung well, when no one 
else ever finds it out. "I tell you, you have preached 
to-day and the church will be looking after you with 
offers of a better position or more salary. " (But 
they never come). Failing in this, they often make a 
man believe that God is dealing hard with him, and 
all his brethren are against him. They never speak 
of his works as of others, and often out of all the 
flock this bird is doing most with a certain class of 
sensitive hearts which are so constructed that any 
praise given to another is construed into a slur on 
them. A word of appreciation for (Williams) is a 
word of depreciation for (Clark). I have read of a 
Greek soldier who killed himself trying to destroy a 
monument erected to the memory of a comrade who 
fell in battle where he had fought and escaped. He 
could not look on that monument, for it said to 
him : "They don't appreciate you or what you did 
because you were not killed." So, night after night, 
he would work undermining the foundation of that 
monument, and one night it fell, and in that fall he 
was crushed. So will it be with him who suffers 
evil thoughts concerning others. He will soon per- 
ish in the midst of his own evil thoughts. Many a 
sensitive man has died because of criticisms never 



Disposing of Annoyances. 153 



uttered (hear-says) but never spoken, to him as real 
as the burning sun. One of Athens' artists was so 
much afraid of criticism that he caused to be written 
over his studio: " 'Tis no hard thing to represent 
me, but let him who would blame me mend me." 
And the only criticism I ever allowed myself to 
think of is from a man I know means to help me, 
rather than to find fault, as some who haven't any- 
ing else to do. And every man who lives for God 
may think himself dead to criticism, yet if he thinks 
about it he will suffer because of it, and his suffering 
can do no possible good. Then we are not so dead 
as we think we are. I am often reminded of the 
pastor who, while sitting in his study, heard the 
cry, "John's in the well !" The next cry was, "John 
is dead ! John is dead !" He ran, and, leaning over 
the curb asks, "John, are you dead?" "Yes, sir, 
I am." "Well," said the pastor, "I am glad to hear 
it from your own lips." Thus every Christian 
knows full well that evil thoughts will flock around 
him. To deny it is evidence of the Devil's satisfac- 
tion with him. Hence he has called in his aides. 
He followed Jesus even to the cross on which he 
died, and there said to him : "He saved others ; 
himself he cannot save." Yes, if you ever reach the 
celestial city, you will be able to see the track over 
which you came. 

But here we learn how to treat these annoyances. 
Abram drove them away. He could not help the 
birds flying overhead, but he could forbid their light- 



154 



Victory Assured. 



ing upon his sacrifice. Lorenzo Dow once said : 
"We cannot help the birds flying over our heads, 
but we can prevent their building nests in our hair." 
This is the only safe way for any man, for he who 
entertains errors will become evil. Many have taken 
evil into their minds to examine, weigh, refute and 
overthrow, but have been overthrown themselves. 
Why, the chips fell into their own souls and the 
mind became pregnant with the nature of the evil 
they entertained. Hence, there is one thing we must 
decide to do — either have nothing to do with evil, 
or take the chance of the tests. Some men seem 
bent on testing everything, all things, but he who 
undertakes to test the tides will sooner or later meet 
the fate of Webb, the famous swimmer, who tried 
to overcome Niagara's current, The only safety is 
in driving evil of all kinds away, and the quicker the 
decision is made, the better it will be for us and 
for those to whom we minister. We cannot afford 
to entertain evil for one moment, for the entertain- 
ment will weaken and sadden the heart and often 
embitter the spirit. For instance, suppose you allow 
yourself to think that your friend is not true. You 
will recall readily many things that strengthen the 
thought, and soon you have wronged your friend 
and belittled yourself. The thought has taken root 
in the soil and ever after little roots of jealousy 
spring up in the mind. But when such suggestion 
comes, if driven away before the mind thinks, if 
possible that such a thing could be, you are saved 



Disposing of Annoyances. 155 



from a long struggle. This means watchfulness 
and ready action. Jesus said : ''Watch and pray, 
lest ye enter into temptation." Alexander said : "I 
conquered the world by deciding quickly to act, and 
then acting/' Apply both to the evil suggestions of 
life and you may do the same. 

But suppose they have been entertained. Then 
take Paul's advice and "cleanse yourself from all 
filthiness of the flesh and spirit" and, Grant-like, 
"keep at it on this line if it takes life's summer." 
There is cleansing in the blood of the Lamb. Cyrus 
Field, in giving his account of the Atlantic tele- 
graph, says : "It has been a long and hard struggle. 
Nearly thirteen years of anxious watching and 
ceaseless toil Often has my heart been ready to 
sink. Many times, when wandering in the forests 
of Newfoundland in the pelting rain, or on the deck 
of ships on dark, stormy nights, alone, far from 
home, I have almost accused myself of madness 
and folly, to sacrifice the peace of my family and all 
the hopes of life for what might prove after all but 
a dream. I have seen my companions, one after 
another, fall by my side, and I feared that I, too, 
might not live to see the end, and yet one hope has 
led me on, and I have prayed that I might not taste 
of death until this work was accomplished. That 
prayer is answered, and now, beyond all acknowl- 
edgements to man is the feeling of gratitude to Al- 
mighty God." So our Lord waited and sacrificed 
in view of bridging the chasm made by sin, and, 



156 



Victory Assured. 



having seen the travail of his soul, he will come 
to us with gifts of eternal life, the reward to the 
faithful. Abraham watched and guarded the sacri- 
fice as the sun climbed higher and the heat became 
more intense. Twelve o'clock, and I see him driv- 
ing them away. Three, four, five and six o'clock, 
and he is still there. But when evening came, with 
it came the lamp of life. The sacrifice is accepted 
of God. A bright light kisses the skies as incense 
went up from that altar, and God appeared with 
gifts from that altar, and God appeared with gifts 
for his faithful friend. 

Listen! God speaks. "Thou shalt go to thy 
fathers in peace. Thou shalt be buried in a good old 
age, and unto thy seed shall be given the land from 
the river of Egypt to the river Euphrates, the Ca- 
naanites and the Jebusites." Well might he wait 
and watch for such a blessing, reaching even to the 
farthest generation. So shall it be with the faithful 
saints of all ages. They need no burning lamp or 
ringing bells, for God will attend their exit and coro- 
nation, and He is light, and in Him there is no 
darkness at all." 

Princes hold the crown at the coronation of their 
successors, but the saints order the angels to "bring 
forth the royal diadem, and crown Him Lord of all," 
and the choirs chant: "To him that overcometh I 
will grant to sit with me in my throne, even as I 
also overcame and am sat down with my father on 
his throne." Again: "He that overcometh shall 



Disposing of Annoyances. 157 

inherit all things, and I will be his God, and he shall 
be my son." 



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